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  The storm below was starting to flash as the magic started to overload in specifically designed ways. A storm could create a great deal of energy by natural means – spinning winds and gathering static electricity could be channeled into different magical spells, or could be fed back into the storm itself to produce a continual feedback cycle. Like most feedback cycles, this was inherently unstable and would eventually cause the storm to self destruct.

  The mages who had designed it had taken that natural inclination and used it to end the storm just like clockwork.

  Gathered energies surged into the vortexes that poured rain down onto the deserts surrounding Babylon and snapped them apart. The clouds wobbled like a plate of rendering fat in a soup...and then dispersed. They scudded away from Babylon, as if flung away by gods.

  But there were no gods at work. Only men.

  Sunchaser beamed as he looked down at the city. The old city walls had been knocked down to celebrate the return of a victorious army bearing the (mostly symbolic) corpse of Sysminor, the false god. The new buildings sprawled past the original walls were a mixture of those that had been constructed on firm grid-like patterns and those that had been simply thrown up wherever. Bribed officials, sloppy engineering, mistakes in planning. Whatever the cause, it looked like dough after someone had slapped down a grid pattern cutter.

  The docks had been expanded as well. The harbor of Babylon, which had already been one of the finest in Purgatory, now had a pair of artificial piers flung out that served both as a place to dock many more ships – ranging from old style triremes and longships to the newest sailing ships that had been knocked together by ever shipwright who had pawed through the three Patrick O’Brian novels that had been part of the Library of Vanderbilt.

  There had been frustratingly few exact details, but a great deal of inspiration, and now, there was a heady race from every merchant and shipwright to see which one could build the perfect ship first.

  Surrounding the outskirts of the city were the farms. These had been mercilessly organized and directed by the Free Lord and his offices to ensure that nothing was wasted. With a massively expanded population and the rest of Purgatory still ravaged by the War of the False God and the continuing civil war between the factions of the Dodekatheon, Babylon could not rely on grain imports like it once had.

  Sunchaser smiled.

  Then Cutter slapped the back of his head again – gently this time. “Idiot!”

  Sunchaser blinked and started as he realized that a light was winking up at him from Watch Central. The large tower had a wide array of bronze mirrors, and they used them to catch sunlight (or torchlight at night) and wink them at the watch stations overhead. The coded flashes were easily translated, but Sunchaser still had to furrow his brow as he tried to catch up.

  “Observation report request...” he muttered. “Sector 40-20.”

  He looked at Cutter. “Obser-”

  “I saw it!” she snapped, then hurried over to the side mounted mirror controls. The mirror mounted on the side of the watch station was one of the few parts of the station that wasn’t ceramic. That meant it was very hot – this close to the sun, it wasn’t even cool to touch during the night. She started to work the control – hardened clay clicking and clacking as cams, leavers, shafts worked in the wall. She read from a scroll showing the Morse Code signals, muttering under her breath.

  “Observation report request. Sector...”

  “40-20,” Sunchaser said, reaching down to tuck his book safely away.

  “All right.” She sighed. Then, with a snarl. “I’m still going to report you, you know.”

  Sunchaser groaned.

  ***

  Fizit frowned and looked down at the report from Watch Station 40-20. The script was spidery and cramped and full of the kind of spelling errors that she was used to sifting through. She didn’t even notice the fact that ‘fire’ had been spelled ‘fyire’ and that ‘troops’ was missing an O or that cannon was spelled with two Ks. Instead, she just read what was there and what was there was enough to make her tail lash like a metronome. She snarled and then resisted the urge to tear the report apart with her claws.

  Venting her frustration on papyrus would be a pale imitation of venting her frustration on a real, live person. She had some bloody fantasies, starting with Ares and working her way down to the least of his lackies. She stood her stool scraping as she pushed it back. Then she walked around her desk, scooping up her paper and starting for the door to her office. She opened it and saw that both of her guards were looking strained. They were both human, and they wore simple cloth uniforms, muskets (ceremonial, for the most part) resting at the ground beside them.

  It was the look on their faces that made her slitted eyes narrow.

  Then she wheeled around. She narrowed her eyes at a bit of curtain that was twitching slightly. The large silk curtains were decorated with the symbol of Babylon and had been put in place after Hierophant Mary had, with a note of exasperation in her voice, pointed out that she’d have an easier time convincing visiting dignitaries to respect her and the Free Lord of Babylon if his palace didn’t look so…

  Spartan.

  The figure behind the curtain froze.

  Fizit stalked forward, her worries focusing down into a single moment. She knew that the wrong move, the wrong step, would spell doom for her. She couldn’t trust the guards. It was clear they had been bribed. But she was a canny woman. Years of being a spymaster had come after years of being a spy. Changing her side hadn’t changed that. And so, she leaped aside as the curtain flipped open and grabbed the form that darted at her.

  “Awww!” Brax squealed as Fizit swung her son up and away from the floor. Her son was…

  Odd.

  But Fizit would have cheerfully disemboweled the first person who remarked on it. She held him and beamed at him and wondered what on Purgatory had made her lucky enough to have him in her hands.

  He looked, at one year, roughly the same as a three month old. That would be for one of her kind. But Liam, the father, had said that he was closer to the human five year old. It had seemed logical to her that a mix between a lizardfolk and a human would have something near the midpoint of their ages, but it had produced nothing but confusion and muttered speculations from Liam about biology and impossibilities.

  Well.

  If he was impossible, Brax was her impossible. His face was human-ish, flat without a muzzle. But his eyes had the curved ridges of a lizardfolk, and his hair was interwoven with the long, flat scales that served as a lizardfolk’s ‘hair.’ More, his hair was closer to her coloration than a human’s: Blues and greens, mixed and flashing. His shoulders had a few more scales, but most of his arms and chest were pale, pinkish human skin.

  He had a long, thin tail, which twitched from side to side as he stuck his extremely long tongue out at her. “Nyaah! How’d you catch me, Mom?”

  “Practice,” she said – then forced herself to remember her job. “And you should be with the tutors.”

  “I hate the tutors...” Brax muttered.

  “I know, honey,” Fizit said, then set him down. She shot a glare at one of her guards. “And you! You’re supposed to send him along.”

  “Sorry ma’am,” the guard she transfixed with her glare said, his face like carved granite. “He was too stealthy for me.”

  Fizit made a face. Bribed, without a doubt. Brax could bribe anyone by just being too fucking adorable. She knew it. That was why it was slightly less effective when he tried to be cute at her.

  Slightly.

  When she sequestered little Brax with his adopted sister, Marion, Fizit had to jog to get to Liam’s offices. She jogged past the meeting rooms for guild representatives, the administrative offices where taxes and payment rolls were kept. She jogged past the cartography office, where the reports from the watch stations that were suspended like a necklace of jewels around Purgatory’s sun were turned into the finest maps that had ever been crafted on Purgatory
. At last, she came to the office itself. The guards there saluted and let her by, and once she was in, she found Liam frowning as he held up a parchment.

  Liam Vanderbilt had changed from the first time Fizit had seen him.

  The first ‘glimpse’ she had had of the man had been a hazy collection of intelligence reports and whispered comments from spies. They had described a blond headed giant of a man who towered over the average Purgatorian, bearing an enchanted sword and a magical tome full of a thousand books. They had talked about a frightening skill with arms and a fiendishly clever mind, matched with a kind heart.

  She hadn't expected her first real glimpse of him to be Liam standing naked except for a tight, white thong that was groaning under the stress of keeping his immense package covered. Part of Fizit was actually happy about that little oversight in her intelligence gathering. Uncovering that package and the delicious feeling of shock, awe and raw lust that it had set off inside of her remained a treasured memory.

  A lot of those other early whispers had been right though. Liam remained the biggest man that Fizit had ever met. His shoulders were broad and slabbed with muscle, while his face remained boyishly handsome even with the addition if a few nicks and scars. The only thing that marred him, really, was the stump of a foot he had resting on the broad desk. His other foot was unharmed, but the artificial foot that had been crafted for him by Hephaestus sat beside the desk like a discarded shoe.

  The flesh of his injured looked utterly smooth, as if his foot had been plucked off and placed in storage. There was a bit of a callus that had been built up in the place where the curved stump pressed against the leather and metal of the artificial foot, but other than that, it was smooth.

  “Hey Fiz,” Liam said, casually as he looked over the paper. “How does this sound: If you don’t remove your troops from the Barrier Mountains and return to the border agreed on, we will take punitive action first on the trading field, then on the battlefield.” He frowned. “Too harsh? It sounds kind of harsh to me.”

  Fizit frowned, her tail twitching from side to side. She crossed her arms over her breasts and sighed. “I think it sounds harsh, but those Thorites are one bad day away from just openly raiding our trading caravans.”

  Liam frowned, considering. “They’re mostly refugees.”

  “They’re bandits,” Fizit said, her voice flat. “The refugees come to the city itself and pay taxes.”

  Liam sighed. “All right.” He set the paper down. “I’ll send it by valk to the mountain passes. Uh, what’s up?” He set his feet – foot – down and sat up. His lips quirked in a slight smile. “Our little terror didn’t escape from the tutors, did he?”

  “He did,” Fizit said, her smile breaking across her face despite her best efforts on the contrary. “But, uh, no. I’ve got another observation report from the Hellenic League, and it’s bad.”

  She set the report down. It had come from Watch Station 20-40. Each watch station had two valkyrie (as they were the only ones who could reach and man them.) Because there were a limited number of valkyrie who could draw with any sense of accurate scale or speed, Fizit had quietly made sure that the best of them were in the watch stations that hovered, perpetually, over the vast jungles of the Hellenic League.

  The scroll had been slightly singed in the drop from the helioproximal level of Purgatory’s atmosphere, but the middle was dominated by the lines of a battlemap. No detail beyond the elevation markings and the disposition of forces, which were marked with rectangles using specific symbols that could be drawn and recognized quickly. Liam frowned as he leaned over them, his brow knitting.

  “Fifteen thousand musketeers?” he muttered. “Ten cannon, five thousand cavalry, these numbers are insane, how the hell is Ares getting these many troops? How is he feeding them?”

  Ares. The God of War. The mastermind behind the False God Sysminor. He had been a thorn in Liam’s side for years but Fizit’s tribe had been kept under Ares boot-heel for decades. Shaped and honed into his army via the puppet Sysminor, they had been the forefront of the attempt to conquer Purgatory. But with Sysminor’s death, everyone had expected Ares to resume being Zeus’ pathetic lickspittle son. Instead, he had split the Hellenic League and the Dodekatheon in two and had been waging war against his half-siblings and father.

  Everyone had expected it to be one-sided. War god or no, Ares was still only one god.

  Instead, his troops were now ringing around New Athens.

  “Those walls can’t take those cannons for long, even with Zeus’ tricks,” Liam said, frowning. “We’re going to be sucked into that war again soon.”

  Fizit nodded. “That we are.” She didn’t say what she was thinking: We should have joined months ago. But both she and Liam knew that.

  And both she and Liam knew why they hadn’t.

  Liam rubbed his hands against his face. He groaned and leaned his elbows against his desk. “We can’t win a war without the support of the people – these new taxes aren’t exactly the most popular thing in the universe. The Guilds are hammering at my door for more freedom to make magical wares and firearms. And let's not even get started on the various cults and churches that each want to have the others banned.” He smirked, sliding his hands away from his face. “At least no one is actively trying to murder me anymore.”

  At Fizit’s expression, Liam sighed.

  “Who is actively trying to murder me now?”

  Fizit smiled. “Agent Rao infiltrated one of the groups.” She spread her hands. “She’s fed them some intelligence that you’ll be leaving the city soon.”

  Liam frowned. “I... will?”

  “You will,” Fizit said, walking over, then sitting her rump on the desk. She grinned. Like a predator. “And I’ll grab them up when they try to assassinate you. I don’t want to wait like that madman with the musket.”

  Liam made a face. He leaned slowly back in his seat again. “Do we have their grievances? Maybe we can resolve this before it gets to murder?”

  The door to the room opened. Liam tensed – and then relaxed as he saw who it was.

  “Oi! That’s my seat!”

  Fizit blinked as she was unceremoniously picked up and a new form slipped underneath her. A pair of hands cupped her breasts through her shift, squeezing her playfully as Megara Vanderbilt purred against her cheek.

  “But I am willing to forgive you,” she whispered, her voice hot against the side of Fizit’s ear. Her fingers found and tweaked Fizit’s nipples through her thin silk. Fizit squirmed and writhed, her tail coiling around Meg’s belly. The valkyrie woman was, in many ways, incredibly similar to Fizit. Like Fizit, she had an astounding rack. Like Fizit, she was muscular. Like Fizit, she was utterly unashamed of her sexuality. In that case, the differences that were there – the lack of tail, lack of scales, lack of feathers and lack of frills – seemed so minor as to make them near twins.

  “Meg, I’m, ah, trying, ah, to... ahhh!” Fizit moaned as Meg tugged gently on her nipples. “Woooorrrk!”

  “I know, that’s why I swooped in to save the day,” Meg said, chuckling. “It’s time for dinner, Liam.”

  Liam blinked. “It is?”

  “It was technically dinner a half hour ago,” Meg said, her hands sliding from Fizit’s now tingling breasts to her belly. “And you can’t just eat lizard pussy for dinner. Breakfast? Sure! Brunch? Totally. But dinner? That’s just absurd.”

  Fizit gasped. Meg’s fingers, questing and devilish, had slipped between her thighs. Her shift crinkled and scrunched upwards, fabric tugging against the grain of her scales, revealing the puffy softness of her labia. Her sex was already moist, with just a few squeezes, caresses, and whispers purrs. Fizit hadn’t been entirely prepared, when she had started living in the Vanderbilt household, how quickly Meg would be able to rev her up. It had been the fifth most pleasant thing she had discovered about working here.

  Fizit clenched her jaw as Meg’s fingers slipped into her sex. Meg grinned wickedly as she whispered
in her ear. “So, you two ready to cum with me and get something in your bellies?”

  Liam watched with a tolerant grin. “Meg.”

  “Yes?” she asked, voice sweet as the fingering she was giving Fizit. By this point, Fizit’s hard nosed exterior had started to peel aside against the pressure of a single dexterous finger grinding against her center. She felt the growing heat buzzing in her, spreading outwards from her sex in waves. The pleasure wasn’t merely the raw sensuality of Meg’s touch – it was also contained in the warmth of her arms, the playful tone of her voice. The way that Liam watched. It was a heady mixture of emotions that Fizit was still getting used too, even after a year.

  “We were discussing some affairs of state,” Liam said. “You know, the usual. Assassination, attempted destabilization of all we have built, Purgatory wide conquest, that kind of thing.”

  Meg scoffed. “So, a Tuesday?”

  Fizit gasped out her pleasure – and then forced herself to speak. Well. More ejaculate between moans of orgasmic bliss. But if that was what it took to deliver an intelligence briefing – getting fingerbanged by the most sensual valkyrie on the whole of Purgatory – then that was a sacrifice Fizit was willing to take.

  “Their grievances, ahhh! Are, um, ohfuckyes, that... ah, the fact that you’ve integrated both my tribe and Meg’s tribe into the city after the waaaa-aa-arrrr!” She rolled her head back, her tongue flicking the air as she trilled. Her tail twitched hard enough to almost crack the air like a whip as she shuddered in Meg’s hands. Said hands had gotten busier and busier with every word. Now, Meg was cupping and squeezing a single bared breast, tugging on Fizit’s hard nipple as she had added her thumb to work in the fingerbanging. Specifically, she was rubbing her thumb in a slow circle – with just enough pressure – against Fizit’s hard, eager clit.

  “Racist dicks!” Meg exclaimed – a phrase that she had adopted from long exposure to Liam. Fizit personally found the whole concept of racism a baffling one. Of course there were differences between different races. Pointing that out wasn’t bigotry, it was just common sense. But she had decided to shelve that argument for another day – and right now, she was so languidly satisfied that Liam could have smacked her in the face with his dick and she wouldn’t have blinked.