A Hoard of Lesbians – Chapter 2

            "Oh, shut up!”

            I said, even though Chrysadora had not said anything. Instead, those toned and tanned arms were pointing to the dark wood enclosed wagons, which, aside from a little dusty area on the bottom and around the wheels, seemed to shine like an oily rock against the afternoon sun. Chrysadora looked a little confused at my reaction, and I couldn’t blame her. I was confused too. I covered my gaping mouth with both my hands as I gasped and moved closer.

            One of the black stallions attached to the wagon huffed, and I could almost hear the elitist accent on the horse’s breath. The idea of pulling my soaking, miserable self around seemed beneath it. When I thought Chrysadora wasn’t looking, I stuck my tongue out to the horse as I approached the wagon.

            “You had this just… Waiting here?” I asked, in disbelief, my hand caressing the bronze handle of the small wagon door.

            “Well, yes, where else would it go without me?” she said, puzzled.

            Where else, indeed. I sighed and turned to her, then looked down at my boots. River water was still dripping abundantly from my gambeson, and my boots were soggy enough to make a squelching, slushing sound with each step. Not to mention that I wasn’t exactly smelling like a flower shop after my impromptu dive.

            “I don’t know… I guess I thought you were on foot…” I offered, timidly, regarding my own state. “Are you sure you want me to go in there? I’m a bit of a mess.”

            “I would not say ‘a bit’,” Chrysadora said calmly, moving towards me and then past me to open the door for me. “But you were already dripping when I offered to help you get to town. That hasn’t changed.”

            “Uh…” I fumbled, as that was the best I could do.

            The reveal of the interior showed two really nice, cushioned seats facing each other over what seemed to be a blackwood tea table decorated with bronze rims. The walls were padded, and there was a little string from which one could pull curtains for privacy. I had only ever seen the wealthiest people in Valenza riding that sort of carriage, and then again, always from the outside. But she didn’t strike me as a noble. For one, there was no heraldry on the side of her black wagon, just a polished bronze monogram of a C and a W merged together elegantly and surrounded by a scaly serpent biting its own tail. Not the mark of any of the Trade Masters of Valenza or the High Houses. I would know, I had done so many shitty contracts with their stamp on them that I could probably pass a first-year Heraldry School exam.

            It was strange to me to think that someone with that much gold would want me to pollute those seats that I could absolutely not pay to have cleaned, let alone replace. Yet the weight of my heavy armour, and the fact that drowning had a particular way to just exhaust all of one’s energy for the day, managed to push me against what my good sense told me was the best way forward. I took her hand, even though I didn’t need it, and stepped up the ladder, as she gestured to her black clad driver to continue on and then entered, closing the door behind her.

            “Welp…” I said, hitting the 'p' with a popping flick of my lips while my hands nervously drummed on my soggy knees. “It’s, uh… A pretty sweet ride.”

            The sound of the wheels creaking as they began to move was soon joined by the gentle wobbles of the heavy wooden frame of the carriage and the clopping of hooves on the smooth flagstones of the road to Valenza.

            “Thank you,” Chrysadora said, with a polite and warm smile. Her hands were folded over her lap in a perfect display of courtly etiquette, though lacking the signature look of superiority. “I have faster ways of getting around, but I don’t like to call more attention to myself than needed.”

            I opened my mouth, about to point out to her that her choice of ride was not what I would define as discreet, but before the words left my mouth, my face contracted in thought. Faster ways to get around? More flashy than that mahogany and bronze monument to, admittedly, tasteful decadence? Too many questions swirled in my mind, making it hard to decide which one to ask next.

            “Well, uh… I’m glad you were around to pull me out of that river when you did… I mean, duh, obviously… But…”

            There was a lesson somewhere in there not to start a sentence without at least some idea of how I planned to finish it, but standing under the piercing golden gaze of someone who had absolutely no discomfort with eye contact had rendered me into a bit of a nervous mess. Not the best state to learn lessons.

            “That was very fortunate,” Chrysadora said, and her soft expression contained no judgment over my difficulty in expressing myself.

            It should’ve been a relief, but it only made me more flustered. I suddenly realised how interesting the row of trees out the window was, as I looked intently at them and everywhere else but at the woman sitting across from me.

            “Y-Yeah… Very fortunate… Uh…”

            My hand fiddled with the idol at my side, the reason for all this. And I kept thinking about the contract. The pay was good enough for a group of four to split, and a group of four would have probably had an easier time with it. But if someone were to do it alone, let’s say a charming, heart-of-gold girl of quick wit and resourceful ingenuity, then that person wouldn’t need to split the payment. And they could, hypothetically, pay their rent, which was three months late, and still have enough money to get their chainmail shirt patched on that gap in the armpit. Assuming that entirely hypothetical person had those problems, of course.

            I could barely hear any of the sounds of the forest outside, but I knew soon the cicadas would start singing; the dinner bell to a lot of crepuscular birds to come swooping down and fill their bellies on insects with the misfortune of also taking the early evening shift airborne. Valenza was not forgiving, but I always reminded myself that life in the wild was no picnic. Everybody assumed they would be the owl, never the shrew. The corner of my eye went to Chrysadora, who looked at me as if expecting me to say the next thing, whatever it was. I reached under my armpit to scratch my skin through the gambeson, passing my fingers through the small hole in my mail there, and then took a deep breath. My cheeks were burning, but the wheels in my head had not stopped turning. I couldn’t hear the cicadas. I could barely hear the wind.

            “Wait… How did you hear me all the way from the road? We had to walk, like… Twenty minutes to get here…” I furrowed, turning back to her, and trying not to tense. “And in here? I mean…”

            “Ah,” Chrysadora didn’t hesitate to answer, a mild shrug followed by her finger being raised with a jiggle of those gold chains. “As fate would have it, you took your plunge just as I was stepping out of the wagon… The journey to Valenza is long, so I have my driver halt so I can go and stretch every once in a while.”

            “But… How did you get to me on time?”

            “I did tell you that I have faster means to travel, didn’t I?” she said, and chuckled, as if the answer was obvious enough for me to miss it, being amusing.

            My eyes furrowed, and while I’m usually the type to roll my eyes at people who attempt to act cryptic to make themselves more interesting, there was something about that warm chuckling that completely disarmed me. Chrysadora didn’t look anything like those guys that arrived at the Gilded Cauldron three or four hours before boom hour, just so they could secure the dark corner for themselves, where they would sit, brood, and deliver cryptic warnings. I was, I regret to inform, intrigued and, dare I say, perhaps even a little charmed.

            “So… You had stopped by the road to stretch your legs, and you heard me falling off the cliff and… Somehow got to me before I drowned?”

            “Something like that.” Her eyes held my gaze with a certain sharpness that seemed to defy me to challenge her vagueness.

            I was almost charmed enough to back out. After all, I should be grateful that she saved my life, and shouldn’t be thinking too hard about the rest, I reckoned. The more likely explanation was that she had some form of magical gift she used to save me. There were a handful of sorcerers who were still willing to spend magic for the sake of others, even near Valenza. But I never met a sorcerer, selfless or otherwise, who was so keen on hiding their gifts.

            “Do you always answer questions like that?”

            “Like… That?” she asked, but the curl at the edge of the lips made it clear that Chrysadora knew precisely what I meant, even if she was playing coy.

            “Evasively… Not really answering.”

            “Hrm… No. Not always. But most of the time, I’m afraid…” she said, and her eyes finally left me to focus on her hands. She touched one of her thick golden rings, rotating it on a digit, and when her head lifted, I could swear her honey-tan cheeks were just a smidge darker, as if they were flushed as well, just, of course, not as much as mine. “Why? Does that bother you?”

            I can come off as a little oblivious at times, dear reader, and I know you must expect me to say that I did not catch the obviously flirty playfulness of those questions. Let me assure you that I most certainly did. Yet, yours truly found herself soaking in river water, still kinda tasting it, absolutely sore, miserable, and unable to go too long without wondering if my landlord had placed an eviction notice on my door yet. I point all of this out so that my reaction is, hopefully, a little more understandable.

            “Wh-Why, I… N-No, it… I mean… It’s not a p-problem, it’s…” I said with a grace that rivalled that of a dizzy duck trying to land on a choppy pond during a very windy day. I scratched the back of my neck and looked, immediately, out of the window, with my other hand clutching tight around the idol. “I am j-just curious, that’s all…”

            “Hm… Curious…” Chrysadora said, and with the corner of my eye, I could see her turning her own sight outwards towards the woods. Her voice betrayed no emotion, at first, but the teasing returned, lighter that time, just beneath the surface. “Are you sure that’s all?”

            I was sure that wasn’t all. And at that moment, I felt a tingle on the very edge of my nipples and a certain warmth on the higher part of my inner thighs, despite the cold contact of the skin there with my slow-drying pants. Suddenly, I found myself wishing that I could drop by home and change before having that drink with Chrysadora, but I doubted we would have time for that.

            I wish I could say that for the rest of the duration of our trip to Valenza, our lovely heroine, that is me, managed to overcome her self-conscious paralysis and push down her shyness to present herself as a smooth, seasoned warrior, exchange a few tall tales of her adventures with Chrysadora and utterly impress that woman with her courage and valorous feats. But, as you may have guessed by my use of ‘I wish I could’, that was not what happened. I will report, though, that twice I opened my mouth and almost started telling her the story about how I defeated, alone, a group of half a dozen furious goblins. It was one of the stories I was asked to tell the most over drinks at the Gilded Cauldron, and I had refined it into an exciting narrative that I could easily tweak to make more exciting, more tense, or more epic, depending on the audience’s reactions. But ultimately, all I did was open my mouth, produce no sound, and close it again. Then, I spent twenty minutes after each time it happened, chiding myself for not doing it. Or chiding myself for attempting.

            Before I could muster the courage to try a third time, I felt the sound under the carriage change, and the forest around us gave way to row upon row of cobblestone houses. We had reached the Extramural, and Chrysadora’s driver took up towards the Skyway. The stone ramp took us higher and higher until we were wheeling across a bridge. Not a bridge over water, mind you, or at least not just, but a wide bridge built above the houses of the Extramural. For a while, all I could see was a scene of chimneys and clay tiles covered in smog, but soon, the vision was obstructed by more houses, constructed on the Skyway itself.

            The Skyway was built, my ex-girlfriend told me, over what was once an aqueduct leading into Valenza, allowing carts loaded with goods to make a straight path towards the city and avoid the maze-like streets of the Extramural district. Under the bridge, water still rolled, now through closed pipes, into the city. The Skyway ended at the Titan Gatehouse, given that name because it was tall enough to house two sets of gates: the square portcullis below the Skyway leading to the ground level of the city, and the Skygate above, with a large arched top decorated with Gryffon gargoyles on either side.

            We had to wait for a minute at the Skygate; two wagons were ahead of us. The city guards, wearing the sky blue and white surcoat of the city over their gleaming mail, and holding an arrow-hound on the leash, scanned each wagon for cursed items and dangerous magical materials. Then they collected a toll and waved each of them through. That wasn’t my usual entrance point into the city, but I had passed through it during a couple of missions where I was hired as a bodyguard for some noble with more jewels than sense, so I knew how stuff worked at least.

            I turned to explain what was happening to Chrysadora, but found her quietly reaching into a black velvet purse to pull out around three Sovereigns, the glittering reflection of gold in the coins almost leaving me out of breath. As our turn came, she opened the door of the wagon, handing the three coins to one of the guards. The arrow-hounds had their scaly haunches up and looked guarded towards us, towards Chrysadora’s carriage, but were not hissing or pointing as they would if they found signs of foul magic.

            “Welcome to Valenza, citizen…” the guard said, accepting the coins. “This is… Too much for the toll. One Sovereign is enough.”

            “Consider it a donation to the Gate Guard. Have some fun,” Chrysadora said, winking and closing the door. Then, she turned to me as the wagon resumed moving. “Small cost to keep the wheels greased,” she said.

            “But… We don’t have anything illegal with us, do we?”

            “No, no, don’t worry… I’m not trying to avoid inspection. I’m trying to avoid extortion. When the guards know you are a generous guest, they focus their effort on other outsiders.”

            “Outsiders… So… You don’t live in Valenza?”

            “Oh, no, no… I couldn’t… City life just isn’t for me. I have an estate not far from here… Not too close either,” she said, shaking her head. She brushed a speck of unseen dust from her dress and thighs before sighing. “I presume you do?”

            “Uh, yes… Nowhere near the Skygate though…” I said, blushing. “More like… Near Guild Street.”

            I am not sure why I lied. Well, it was not a lie. I did live ‘near’ Guild Street, as in, I could get there in five or so minutes’ walk at a brisk pace. But my actual place of residence was Hook’s Row, by the river. And the place smelled about as well as you’d expect for a street adjacent to a fishing river wharf. I reckoned Chrysadora would never cross the river towards the South Side. Nobody who wore jewellery openly ever did, so I had no reason to tell her my precise address.

            “Guild Street… There are some nice shops there.”

            “Yeah!” I agreed with a mix of real and feigned excitement.

            From there on, we talked idly about a couple of tailor shops in Guild Street, which I happened to know but were not, really, the type of place where I could buy my garments. Chrysadora eventually pulled out a small brass tube that ended in a flared opening, instructing her driver to take us to Guild Street, though not for shopping. I told her I had one stop to make before we could go out for drinks. And as the cart stopped in front of the Adventurer’s Guild, I took a deep breath and exhaled.

            “I’m not sure how long this is going to take… Do you… Wanna go ahead and grab a table at the Gilded Cauldron, and I’ll meet you there?”

            “Oh… Are you sure? Could I come with you?”

            “Oh no, no… This is just going to be some boring bureaucratic stuff…” I told her, shaking my head. “And besides, it’s almost sunset. When the night lights turn on, the Gilded Cauldron gets crowded… If you can get there before, we might not get stuck with the table near the latrine access…”

            Chrysadora laughed at that, though I had meant it as very serious advice. Then, she nodded, closed the door with a smile that unambiguously said ‘I’ll see you there’, which made my legs weak, and my mind wonder if her lips tasted like honey as the colour suggested. Of course, they didn’t, but I would allow myself the dream.

            I turned to face the massive front of the Adventurer’s Guild. Large granite bricks, cut neatly and precisely, formed a massive fortress-like façade. The stained-glass windows were gaudy and didn’t really fit the rest of the building’s austere atmosphere. The four of them were different types of fortune-seeking adventurers: an armoured knight, a magus holding up a ball of fire, a stealthy leather-clad figure perched on a rooftop, and a woodsman holding a bow. All of them were men, despite the fact that about twenty to twenty-five per cent of the Guild were women, like me. The doors were marked by the Guild’s coat of arms, a sword and a hammer crossed behind a set of scales, representing the two highest values of the Guild: brute strength and money.

            As I entered the hall, the usual cacophony drowned my thoughts. An elven woman screamed as two of her friends tried to apply water to what seemed like a gelatinous cube burn on her shin. A tall half-orc had three arrows sticking out of his side but seemed more bored than anything as he held a piece of parchment that, I was sure, was to request delayed payment for healing services, deducted from future contracts. There were many others, between well-armed groups covered in grime and carrying treasure or artefacts, or fresh-faced and clean warriors, some of them young and bright-eyed, excitedly talking about what they would do with the money from their first contract.

            They no doubt didn’t know that their first ten contracts with the Guild would likely involve an increased ‘finder’s fee’, which we often called the Rookie Tax, which the Guild used to cover their ass when they weren’t sure someone was trustworthy yet. The Guild was really good at covering their ass.

            “Hey, Brie! How is it? Oh, girl, you are looking radiant today!” I declared as I walked past everyone else in line, straight to the large counter and the half-elf girl with red hair working there. She looked up across her round spectacles hanging from her nose and seemed very unimpressed by my compliment.

            “Matilda of Wendyr… There’s a line, and you just cut in front of all these fine people.” She pointed behind me.

            “Oh, is there? Sorry, I didn’t see…” I lied, looking at the scrawny magus standing next to me, clutching his staff with both hands and almost giving himself a stroke trying to muster the words to talk to me. “You don’t mind if I handle something real quick, right?” I asked. He babbled something incomprehensible, and I said, “Thanks!” with my best imitation of a grateful smile. “See, Brie, he doesn’t mind.”

            Brie rolled her eyes. “You are here to see a Factor, right?”

            I smiled, pulling the ugly bugbear idol from where it was sitting, between my arm and my ribs, over the counter.

            “Does that answer it?”

            Brie looked at me for two entire seconds without blinking or changing her expression, displaying an unamused exhaustion.

            “Room three is free,” she said, pulling a small tome. “But it’s Bertran, and he’s in a mood… So, I’d go now, and I wouldn’t test him today.”

            “Don’t you need to give me a chip to present him for the meeting?” I batted my eyes at her, grabbing the idol again.

            “Yes. And you need to wait in the back of the line. So just go upstairs, keep my name out of it and…”

            “Meat pie from Granny’s next time I see you?” I guessed.

            Brie nodded quietly before turning to the magus:

            “Now, sir, regarding your risk claim, I’m afraid it was your decision to have sex with the…”

            I left before I could hear the rest of the story. There was a time when I could’ve been curious to know where the rookie had stuck his pocket-poker, but you just needed to be working with the Guild for a couple of years to know that there were very few creepy crawlies in the deep places of the world that someone wouldn’t try to consort with beyond mere diplomacy. Whatever truly juicy gossip there was to be heard, I could always just ask Balon at the healing wing. He also had, like Brie, a weakness for a south side meat pie, and I was not above exploiting that for favours or saucy rumours. I’m just human, after all.

            The upstairs was much quieter. Past the carpeted stairs, there was the wooden panelled, checkered black and white marble floor that led to several offices of the middle-ranking officials of the Guild. The Factors served as official witnesses for guild contracts, overseeing the delivery of the contract and payment, and ensuring, in theory, that neither the client nor the adventurer was short-changed. In practice, though, what they were truly ensuring was that the Guild got their cut.

            I walked to the third door and stopped in front of it to perform a quick sniff check by pulling at my gambeson and inhaling the hot, humid air rising from my chest. I don’t know why I did it, because, yes, I did stink, and no, I couldn’t do anything about it. Shrugging, I knocked twice but didn’t wait for a response to open the door.

            “Bertie?” I cooed softly. “May I?”

            “What? Matilda? I have not called for the next appointment yet… Are you number six?”

            “Oh no, Gods no…” I shook my head and pushed into his office. “I didn’t take a number.”

            Bertran furrowed his brow and pressed his fingers against the sides of his head. But then his eyes turned to the idol under my arm, and he interrupted his exhausted and exasperated exhale with an almost gasp. That was when I noticed the figure across from his desk in the Factor’s office, clad in black robes and face concealed by a hood despite the fact that we were indoors.

            “I should just send you all the way back downstairs,” he began, visibly annoyed, but then he gestured towards the hooded man standing so still he almost looked like a statue across from the vast wasteland of oakwood and paperwork that was Bertran’s desk. “But… As your luck would have it, Mr Shadowmoor here is the client for your contract if I’m not mistaken, so… Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we?”

            Bertran gestured a dismissive hand towards the hooded figure, who didn’t move a muscle. My eyes darted between the two of them. It was supposed to be a simple drop-off.

            “Right,” I said, forcing a cheerful tone and placing the bugbear idol on the corner of his polished mahogany desk. “That saves everyone some time! So, here you go…” I tapped over the idol twice. “One genuine bugbear idol. Gently loved, but no damage. Delivered personally, as per the contract.”

            Bertran picked it up, studying it from different angles before he placed it down and pushed it towards Mr Shadowmoor, who, unnervingly, had not moved yet. I felt like slapping the back of his hood to see if there was a head there. Before I could talk to the client directly, Bertran opened a massive drawer and pulled out a hefty double-bound tome marked with the present year written on the cover. He flicked through half of it. Each page featured the Guild’s shield and a unique client marker, along with the conditions for a contract. Finally, he arrived at the one I remembered signing.

            “Here it is,” Bertran said, pulling a quill and dipping it into ink as he read, “Contract AA-734. Idol retrieval from the Redback Bugbear tribe. Gross payment of forty Sovereigns upon delivery. Recommended for a warband of four or more.” Bertran sighed, looking at me. “You had decided to try at it alone, had you not, Matilda?”

            “I didn’t try, I did it alone, Bertie…” I corrected him.

            He winced at the use of the nickname, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Those two magic words were ringing in my head. Forty Sovereigns. I could pay my rent, which would take fifteen of them. But the rest? The rest was mine to enjoy. I should probably get my mail fixed, but after that, I should still have enough to live on for half a year. I could breathe. Maybe take a few milk-run contracts in the meantime, just for spare change. But no more gruesome bugbear fights. Not so soon.

            “Let’s see…” Bertran continued, pulling the contract scroll towards him. “We begin with the standard twenty per cent Guild commission, which comes to eight Sovereigns.”

            My breathing hitched. There goes half a year of freedom. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. That was the deal. That had always been the deal. “Standard, right.”

            “Then we move to item condition,” he said, tapping the idol. A single drop of river water oozed out onto a pristine blotter. “Clause 4B specifies ‘pristine condition.’ I’m noting significant… Aquatic exposure and general grime. That incurs a five Sovereigns cleaning fee.”

            “Cleaning fee?” I spluttered. “I pulled that thing off a shrine! It was already grimy!”

            “And the water damage?”

            “Not damage! Exposure…” I corrected, blushing. “I had an, er… An unforeseen environmental hazard!”

            Bertran simply pointed a perfectly manicured finger at a line of tiny script on the contract.

            “Very well, but be that as it may, ‘Environmental Hazards’. Clause 12C. The risk is assumed by the contractor,” he clarified.

            “Ugh… Fine… Cleaning fee…”

            “And...!” Bertie said, raising his hand to stop me as if I was about to lunge at him for the remaining coin before the rest vanished. “Finally, the Solo Contractor Addendum.”

            “The… What now?”

            “Solo Contract Addendum. The Guild recommended that this contract be done by a four-person team. Doing a four-person job alone invokes a three Sovereigns risk premium to the Guild’s insurers.”

            “But… The risk was all mine?”

            “Oh… We aren’t insuring your life, Matilda… That’s an insurance in case the Guild needs to reimburse the client or hire a recovery group in the event of your demise.”

            “But…!” My fists clenched. My whole body was tense. “That’s… That’s fifteen Sovereigns in fees!”

            “Sixteen. Your Guild dues were paid late last month, so you have to pay a fine of one Sovereign to make your situation regular before we can complete your transaction,” Bertran corrected me calmly, already counting coins from a heavy lockbox. He pushed a leather sack across the desk. It landed with a heavy, but not quite heavy enough, thud. “Your net payment is twenty-two Sovereigns. Please sign the completion ledger.”

            I stared at the bag. Twenty-two. It was enough. Enough for my fifteen-Sovereigns rent debt, enough to fix my armour, enough for a few decent meals. It was enough to survive, but it was nowhere near the forty I had bled for. I looked over at Mr Shadowmoor. The client hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken. Beneath the deep hood, I thought I saw the faintest glint of amusement in his eyes, but it might have just been a trick of the light.

            Gritting my teeth, I snatched the bag of coins and scribbled my name on the ledger. “Always a pleasure doing business, Bertie.”

            I turned on my heels and walked away, the weight of the twenty-two gold coins in my hand feeling less like a victory and more like the links of a chain.