You can skip Chapter 11 without losing the plot.

“How long have you been listening?” Jaco didn’t, Sefton noticed, move out into Taisiya’s view, and he did lift the hook off of the bandit.

“Only a moment. There were quite a few of them out front, as well, and we were trying to catch this one’s mate. Lost him, unfortunately.”

“I know where he was going!” squeaked the bandit on the floor.

“Jaco, Feltian, Hothyan, I believe I gave an order. In. Now. Make sure the children are fine.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sefton bowed as deeply as he dared without exposing Jaco, and waited for the older husband to head into the nursery before he went.

The door thudded closed behind them. Jaco leaned against the wall and sighed.

“Thank you, brother,” he muttered.

Sefton smirked. “I did nothing. Good blade-work out there.”

“You’d better get the chains back on,” Hothyan fretted, “before mother sees you like that. You remember what happened last time.”

“I remember, I remember.” Jaco grimaced. “Give me a hand with them?”

Sefton started putting weapons away and urging the older children out from their hiding-places. “It’s safe,” he assured them, “your mother and fathers are safe.”

The girl who had asked him to tell her a story looked up at him with wide eyes. “We were listening,” she informed him. “The bandit that wasn’t. That’s bad?”

“It could be bad,” he allowed. “What’s your name, sweet pea?”

“Pherishhe.” She worried her lip. “Wives are supposed to keep their husbands safe, aren’t they?”

“And husbands to aid their wives in defense.” That was – well, it was true, and it was accepted teaching, but it was usually the sort of teaching that you did with boys and not with girls. “Like your fathers Onter and Calum help your mother out there in the battle. And, because husbands are supposed to protect the egglings above all else in their life, your father Jaco and I stay here, to protect you.” He patted her head carefully.

“It’s…” She didn’t look reassured, and Sefton started to worry that he had told her different things than her mother or fathers had. “I mean, um. To defend your husbands, wives fight, right?”

“When the home is attacked, yes.” She should have started combat training by now, if she was old enough to make full sentences. No, Sefton corrected himself, if she’d been in the home he’d grown up in, that would be the case. He had no standing to make assumptions like that here. “There are turrets on the corners of your mother’s home. You’ve seen them, right?”

She was starting to leak silent tears. Sefton tried hard not to panic, to keep his expression and his voice calm. These weren’t his sisters. He couldn’t risk making them cry and get away with it because one of his fathers liked him.

“Hey, sweet pea,” he coaxed, dropping to his knees so he could look her in the eye. “what’s wrong?”

She wrapped both her arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly. Not too startled by this — he was oldest of a whole shellful, after all — Sefton patted her back soothingly.

The hug put her in position to whisper in his ear. “I’m scared of guns. I don’t like… I don’t like making holes in people.”

She was far too young to be making holes in people, and on that matter Sefton would stand by his opinion.

“Well, eggling, there are a lot of ways to get around that.” Sefton got comfortable. “One of them is by learning to make your shots from a very long distance, so that you don’t have to see the holes close-up. Another is to find one of the distant houses, that aren’t too likely to be attacked, but that puts you very far from your mother’s nest-home here, and, well, those houses aren’t usually the best for earning money. There’s not much crop to be pulled from a cliffside.”

His younger sister had been contemplating one of those houses. Now Sefton was forced to wonder if she, too, had been motivated by not wanting to put holes in people.

“But what if I want to stay close?”

“Well then, there’s the Academy, if you’re very very lucky, or,” he thought quickly, “we can train in ways to stop people without putting holes in them. I know a few, and I’m sure your fathers Ont—”

“No!” she hissed. “No, not Father Onter for Father Calum, and probably not Father Jaco, either. They want to make everything work out so I do what mother wants, but me… I mean…” She peered up at him with wide blue eyes.

Sefton sighed. “Okay, Pherishhe. I won’t tell your fathers. But that means you’re going to have to be very careful, all right?”

She stared at him for a moment. “Keeping secrets is against the rules,” she whispered.

“It is,” he agreed solemnly. He wasn’t going to lie to her and tell her it wasn’t. “It’s very against the rules. But…” Something shifted in him, something he hadn’t know was there to be moved at all. “You are my daughter, yes, little one?”

“Ye-” She considered it. Good. “Yes. That’s right. You’re my junior father, but you’re my father.”

He smiled at her, pleased. He hadn’t expected to feel like this about Lady Taisiya’s egglings until he had his own egg to incubate. Maybe it was the battle, but he felt very strongly about this little girl. “Well, then, daughter Pherishhe, my duty is to you, too, isn’t it?”

“To protect. To, um,” she fished for the words. “Guide and guard, that’s what Daddy Onter says.”

“Exactly. So I will protect and guard your secret, and you will guard mine, and together we will work out how to deal with that secret. All right?”

Pherishhe looked up at him with wide eyes and a tremulous smile. “You really will?”

“Guide and guard, my daughter, guide and guard.”

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You can skip Chapter 11 without losing the plot.

The bandit squirmed, his hand ending up near his waist. Sefton caught the man’s hand before he could grab hold of whatever weapon he had hidden in his belt-pouch.

“Remember the tender sensibilities of our egglings,” Sefton chided with false calm. “You don’t want to see what happens if you draw steel in front of one of our sons.”

He was a little surprised at himself, to be saying our sons, but it was a truth enough for this.

The bandit paled. “You’re not really going to…”

“Why do we wear chains?” Jaco asked. It was a bit amusing, coming from someone not wearing any. But the question was still there. “Husbands. Why are we chained?”

Hothyan laughed. “That’s eggling stuff. Everyone knows that.”

“This one doesn’t seem to.” Jaco prodded the bandit with his hook. “And he’s wearing ’em, which makes me wonder a number of things.’

“They mean… they mean you’ve submitted to your wife. GIven in, surrendered.” The bandit’s voice was turning into a whine.

“Now that’s an interesting interpretation. Hothyan, have you ever heard that?”

“No, sir. I mean, once from one of those strangers, the ones with the robes. But everyone knows they’re crazy.”

“Everyone does,” Jaco agreed ominously. “But ‘submitted,’ that part’s right.”

Sefton leaned against the door frame, his blade pinning down the bandit’s wrist. “Knelt and everything,” he agreed. “She’s in charge. Her, and then Onter, and then Calum. We have a proper chain of command.”

“Chain of… that sounds military.” The bandit was bleeding lightly from several of his wounds. That was going to be a bear to clean up.

Sefton grinned, showing all his teeth. He could see Jaco and Hothyan doing the same. “It does sound military, doesn’t it?”

“I wonder why that is?” Jaco asked thoughtfully. “Why the families here have such a millitary sounding structure?”

“You’re supposed to be weaklings,” the bandit complained. “You’re supposed to be afraid. All locked up and frail, like women.”

“Like women?” Hothyan scoffed. “What kind of women do you know, that are frail?”

Sefton had fallen silent. He glanced over at Jaco. Jaco seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

“You’re from the Table-Lands, across the water.” Jaco’s voice was hoarse. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Bandits aren’t supposed to be here, either,” Hothyan pointed out. “They’re intruders, dangerous. They take girls.”

The bandit leered. “And boys. And weakling husbands. We’ll take everyone we can gra-ah!” He fell silent as Jaco’s hook poked further into him.

“You’ve come a long way to be a bandit. Bandits,” Jaco explained to Hothyan, “are usually people like us, egg-people from our lands. They might trade with other nations, with pirate and slavers, but they’re often born in a nursery just like you were.”

“No bandit was born anyplace this posh,” the bandit sneered. “Nor would they call themselves ‘bandits.’ That’s just the stupid house-proud name for them.”

“‘Them?’” Jaco poked the man again. “If they’re ‘them’ then what are you?”

The bandit shut his mouth, finally deciding to be quiet.

Jaco sighed. “Oh, you’re going to be difficult. And I was hoping you’d keep spewing out information. Well, let’s see. Hothyan, what blades do you have with you?”

“I’ve got my long-knife and the short nasty-looking black dagger,” Hothyan volunteered. He looked a little pale and a little eager all at once.

Sefton didn’t blame him. This was the first time Sefton had actually encountered a bandit – or someone working with the bandits, or pretending to be a bandit, or whatever this guy actually was – in the living flesh. He’d seen a few dead ones, after they’d attempted to attack his mother’s house, but never one kicking and bleeding and, it seemed, telling lies about the husbands-of-wives who lived here.

Jaco, however, was talking as if torturing bandits was an everyday affair for him. Sefton wondered how much of this was bluster and how much was just fact and experience.

“All right, so. Take the long-knife, and roll him over, like this.” Jaco rolled the bandit over with a foot. “You want to start with the shoulders, here. Or the fingers, but that takes a different tool.”

Out of the corner of Sefton’s eye, he could see the other children sneaking closer. He gestured them backwards with a surreptitious hand-wave.

“Right, right.” The bandit’s voice was a little muffled; he lifted his head up enough to talk. “I, we, we’re from the Desthian settlement. It’s on the other side of the Deep Bay, what you call the Rudder Sea here. It’s a small place, and we never see people from here there. We weren’t sure if you even knew about it. But we’re having some troubles with our land, and so we snuck into a few bandit groups to see if it were common.”

“Why didn’t you just send an ambassador to talk to our consulate?”

“Because your consulates are not interested in the Desthian. They’re interested in the Thaoushie, who happen to currently be claiming all of the Desthian territory, and who also have better trade goods. Us, normal Desthians, they don’t care one bit about.”

“So, what, you attack our homes?” Sefton glared at the man’s back.

“So we embedded ourselves into bandit groups because then we could see what was going on here with every-day people, people who weren’t part of the consulate or the government.”

“And attacked our homes,” Sefton finished for him. “Lovely.”

“It’s a pretty story,” Jaco cut in. “But how did you get into the nursery?”

“I can’t… ow. Okay, okay. Phorino, the one who ran off. He worked with the people who made the vault doors. They all have different combinations, but they all have the same fail-safes. In case a wife needs to get in, if her husbands rebel or, I don’t know, lock themselves in by accident.”

Jaco pushed air out between his lips in a long plosive sigh. “You… no. Seriously? There is no way that you’re telling the truth. It just…”

“It’s awful,” Sefton agreed. “Would they really make a, what, a key? It’s not as if she doesn’t have the combination.”

“Hey, look. I’m telling the truth. Phorino took it with him, but I can show you where in the door it went.” The bandit — the person pretending to be a bandit, Sefton supposed — tried to get to his feet, only to be stopped once again by Jaco’s hook. “I’m telling the truth, I swear!”

“We can take this from here.” Lady Taisiya’s voice was like a splash of cold water. Sefton moved, half-unconsciously, to block her view of Jaco as she came around the corner. “Very well done, Feltian, Jaco, Hothyan. Now get back in the nursery, that’s good boys, and I’ll talk with our bandit here.”

Want more?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1229386.html. You can comment here or there.

Find Chapter 1 here
Chapter 2 is here
Chapter 3 is here
Chapter 4 is here
Chapter 5 is here
Chapter 6 is here
Chapter 7 is here.
Chapter 8: here
Chapter 9: here
Chapter 10: here
Chapter 11 (R-Rated) here
Chapter 12: here
Chapter 13: here

You can skip Chapter 11 without losing the plot.

They stood, staring at the door, exchanging nervous quips and trying to look brave. They had drilled for this. They had been trained for this — Sefton knew he had, at least — since they could hold a weapon, trained, and drilled, and then told over and over again why they would not fight.

It was different, knowing there was an actual fight coming, than all the training in the world.

Sefton tried to count his heartbeats, but they were moving too fast and told him nothing of time’s passing. He remembered an old rowing song, something he’d heard the fishers use when hauling in big catches, and tried to match their slow but intent cadance.

“One circles round town, one paces round town,
one skips her way down, she dances on down.
Two answer the call, two dance to the call.,
two hop to the sound and they bow to the sound.”

Ba— bah-bump-ba-bump, it went, the two-beat quicker and stronger. Jaco joined in on the three verse, and by the four verse Sefton’s heart rate had calmed.

“Five council the fools, five make up the rules.
Five stand ‘gainst…”

The door opened with a terrifyingly quiet sschtkt and a bandit sneered at them. He was wearing chains, Sefton noticed, first, ridiculously, almost before the curved blade he was threatening them with: bangles with three links dangling from each one, like he was someone’s honored husband, like he was flouting the rules, the reason they wore such things.

Standing in a robe and his new wife’s chains, Sefton found that infuriated him. He sneered back at the bandit.

“House-men,” the bandit drawled. “Surrender now and you can live.”

Jaco hummed the beat, ba-bah-bump-ba-bump, and Sefton nodded. He shifted back a half-step, as if scared, and to the left, giving Jaco more room, giving himself more room to swing his blade.

“Five stand ‘gainst the ghouls five carve out our rules,” he sang, chanted, really, and swung his weapon against the bandit.

Jaco carried on the song in a breathy chant as he attacked first the lead bandit, and then the next one through the door. There were only three of them. What did it mean, that there were only three? What did it mean that they were there at all, that they’d opened the door to the nursery?

Sefton didn’t care — did care, but couldn’t afford to care right now. He landing his war-hammer in a crushing blow against the man’s neck, placed a foot on the man’s chest and shoved his backwards into his friend.

“Flee now,” he panted at the survivors, “and you can live.”

The men stared at Sefton and Jaco. “You’re supposed to be fluffy little house-boys. You’re supposed to be in chains!” complained the one in front of Sefton. They looked freaked out. They had looked freaked out since Sefton had started singing.

“You’re supposed to be in chains, too,” Sefton pointed out. Who was this guy, to act like Sefton was breaking the rules? “You’re supposed to be tied down to a home, too. It’s in the rules, in the charter.”

“The rules are for weaklings and eggshells. They’re for prey. We’re not prey.”

“And yet,” Jaco pointed out, “you’re wearing chains. All three of you are wearing some woman’s bracelets. Are you brother-husbands? Where is your wife?”

“Dead,” he sneered. “The rules are shit. But you, you’re good little husbands. You should be following the rules. You should be weaklings, tied up and helpless, ripe for the picking. Then you could come with us. Then you could be Changed by the Shining One.”

Sefton found himself grinning. It wasn’t a nice expression, but it was a fun one. “You obviously didn’t read the whole charter.”

“I don’t think he read any of it,” Jaco opined.

“You may be right. But he definitely didn’t read the part explaining why the chains.“

“Maybe we should put some chains on him and explain it.”

“On both of them.” The second remaining bandit had been backing up slowly, trying to escape without being noticed; when Sefton said that, he bolted for the door. Sefton laughed.

“So it’s you and us,” Jaco grinned. “Why don’t we show you what the chains are for?”

“You’re house-boys,” the bandit complained. “Locked into your nursery with the children for protection.”

“Oh, yes.” Sefton took a step forward, his weapon dangling in a position designed to look casual. “How did you get into the nursery without blasting the door?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything!”

“…yet,” Jaco added ominously. The bandit cringed.

“How did you get into the nursery?” Sefton repeated. He let his weapon swing slowly. “I think you’d better tell us than our lady…”

That was, of course, assuming their lady wife was still alive. Sefton didn’t want to think too hard about that. He might not know Tasiya very well, but he knew what happened to widowed husbands. It made his glare at the bandit a little more intense than it might have been otherwise.

The bandit took a couple steps backwards. “You’re not going to chase me. . Not and risk leaving the nursery unguarded.”

Jaco sheathed his knife and grabbed his hooked stick with a movement so quick and smooth he had to have practiced it. “Don’t have to.” He dropped the hook low, caught it on the bandit’s ankle, and pulled the man off his feet. “Now, talk.”

“Or what?” The man wheezed it out as he struggled to regain his breath, but with the pointed end of Jaco’s hook against his stomach, he showed no signs of standing up. “You have egglings in there. You can’t leave them, and you’re not going to torture me in front of them.”

“Hothyan,” Jaco called, without taking his eyes off the bandit. “Sir, you wear chains, but you don’t know the first thing about the chained men. You have tattoos of the sea-farers on your collarbone,” he moved his hook to casually pull aside the man’s shirt, leaving a thin line of blood and showing the tattoos he was referring, “but you don’t fight like a sailor. What are you?”

The bandit paled as Hothyan ran up, holding two of his own weapons. Jaco took a step forward, his hook slowly moving back to the man’s stomach. “Hothyan, do you remember what I showed you? About the best way to flay a man?”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1229386.html

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1218681.html. You can comment here or there.

Find Chapter 1 here
Chapter 2 is here
Chapter 3 is here
Chapter 4 is here
Chapter 5 is here
Chapter 6 is here
Chapter 7 is here.
Chapter 8: here
Chapter 9: here
Chapter 10: here
Chapter 11 (R-Rated) here
Chapter 12: here

You can skip Chapter 11 without losing the plot.

Hothyan was pacing. Sefton would have told him to sit down, except he was pacing as well. Jaco was not; Jaco had three of the youngest children in a corner and was reading two of them a book while he fed the other one a bottle. Jaco had his weapons near at hand, but none on him. That didn’t matter: Sefton and Hothyan were near the door. If anyone came through, they would delay the attacker long enough for Jaco to swap out bottle for sword.

One of the younger children meandered into Sefton’s walking path and then started pacing him. “Tell me a story?”

It was in his mind to tell her no, can’t you see, we’re busy? but they weren’t, actually, very busy; they were nervous, that was all. And their nerves were making the children nervous as well.

“All right. I’ll tell you a story. But the moment you hear anything loud, you grab everyone you can and you go under your beds, right? You’ve drilled in that, I know you have.”

“Under bed.” She nodded solemnly. She was a daughter; he ought to be wrapping her up in batting and not letting her anywhere near the door. But she wanted a story, and he was not going to tell her no if it would help to calm her.

Except that suddenly he couldn’t remember a single tale. He cleared his throat – twice – and tried to remember something, anything.

“Have you ever heard the story of the house in the sea?” he finally offered. That had been one of his father’s stories,

“On the sea?” she asked. “Like this house?”

“Not on the sea, like this house, like the landed houses so often are.” The words came back to him, and he settled into the big chair, pulled a blanket into his lap, and pulled her up there to sit next to him. “But in the sea. You see, it floats there, away from anything, protected from the storms by the strangest break-wall, and it has sat there from the time of our grandmothers’ grandmothers’ grandmothers.”

“Why is it in the sea? Why is it floating? What do they farm, there?”

“That, and many other questions, have been asked time and again, time and again.” He’d asked the same questions, or his sister had, and his father had smiled benevolently. Sefton tried his father’s soothing, pleased smile. “And the answers that we have are only more riddles, or are rumors, or are lies.”

“But why would they be lies?” she whispered.

That was a new one. Sefton kept the smile on. He noticed he had two other children sitting near him now, too. Well, the better to keep them calm.

He thought back to other stories, to classes in school, to things he’d heard behind the schoolhouse, and then he sorted through for the things he could tell a small child – a small girl child.

“There are three reasons for the histories to be lies,” he told her, still smiling. You had to smile when you said things like this. “First. Because the truth is unknown, and people make up the truth that seems to suit the situation.” He waited a moment for that to sink in, and saw her nod. “Second, because the truth is dangerous. If you know where the sharpest knife is, you do not tell your littlest brother. You wait until he is big enough to handle it before you tell him, right? Some truths are like that. We have to be bigger before we can handle them. And third, some things are lies because the truth would hurt someone, someone who can tell us lies.” He held her eyes. She was little, but she might already understand that there were power differentials. His sisters had, by that age.

She nodded, so solemn, taking it all in. Sefton hoped he wasn’t teaching her bad lessons. These were stories for boys, stories for the ones who would need to know how to lie while smiling, lie while bowing, lie and never, ever get caught.

“So,” she said, shaking her head as if to clear thoughts. “The house in the sea. Nobody knows where it came from? Or why it’s there? But the rumors?”

“Nobody knows why it was built, or if it was built at all, or merely formed. Some rumors say it was here when we came here to this land, and some say that the first people, the people Before, constructed it to show the furthest it was safe to sail. It is not a big house — one woman and one or two husbands, three or four egglings, maybe, might live there, but beyond that they would be sitting upon each other like bricks in a wall. And so far out, who would they talk to? Who would they trade with?” He was getting back into his pace now. “But the house is there. And, once in every generation, someone will get into a big enough boat that they can sail out, out to the edge of the safe seas where the monsters and the Rejects live, and——”

A pounding on the door cut him off. Sefton lifted the girl off his lap and set her carefully on the floor. “You know where to go. Go on, go on, hurry.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jaco doing the same. His chains were gone — when had that happened? Situations like this were exactly what those chains were for.

Then again, the bandits didn’t play by the rules, either. “Come on,” he coaxed the children, and they slipped under their bunks, pulling the projectile-proof curtains down over them. The older children cuddled the younger ones, and the littlest ones were kept at the back of the room with the oldest ones, in the most muffled shelters.

Sefton remembered curling up there with his older brother, when he was very little, and then, when he was older, holding his younger sister, shielding her with his own body in case something awful happened. It was the same arrangement. The same way of putting the girls and the babies as far away from the bandits as possible.

And the one time the bandits had gotten in, they’d gone straight for those back bunks, the thicker ones.

After this, maybe he ought to talk to Onter about changing the arrangement. All of the bunks were projectile-proof, or, at least, they were all supposed to be. Maybe if you put the girls and the egglings in the middle, they’d be in less danger should the awful happen.

The door banged one more time, and then silence. Sefton held still, weapon at the ready. Jaco was holding still.

The vault-like lock began to click. No, no, that was not supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to get that far; Tasiya and the senior husbands were supposed to have stopped them long before that point. Sefton swallowed around a lump in his throat. It was never good, when the bandits got all the way to husbands’ territory. None of those stories ended in anything better than a Heroic Last Stand for the husbands, and many of those didn’t end that well at all.

He glanced over at Jaco. He was pale, too, frowning, his shoulders rolled back and his feet braced. He was holding tightly to his weapon, his knuckles white.

“You know what to do.” He made it a statement, but Sefton could hear the question in it.

“Of course. We train on this at home.” He grinned, although the expression felt forced and fake. “Come on, you don’t think they’d sell Lady Taisiya an inferior husband, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jaco joked. “Someone sold me to her.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1218681.html

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1213581.html. You can comment here or there.

Find Chapter 1 here
Chapter 2 is here
Chapter 3 is here
Chapter 4 is here
Chapter 5 is here
Chapter 6 is here
Chapter 7 is here.
Chapter 8: here
Chapter 9: here
Chapter 10: here
Chapter 11 (R-Rated) here

You can skip Chapter 11 without losing the plot.

She lay sprawled on top of him, her hair trailing over his chest, her breath chill on his skin, her hand pressing down on his arm as if holding him there, as if he could or would move. “Oh, my darling,” she murmured, “you are a lovely husband. Thank you.”

He cleared his throat, searching for words, and could only manage “Thank you, my lady,” in return. “Thank you,” he repeated fervently. He wanted to stroke her hair. His hands were still where she’d told him to put them, still behind his head. He twitched a little but left his hands where they were.

“I think I’m very lucky indeed to have married you.” She stroked his hair as if reading his mind. “And I think I’m going to enjoy having you to myself quite a bit.”

Sefton blushed. “Thank you,” he said, again, and then, because he felt like he had to say something else, “I think I’m lucky, too.”

“I’m glad. I hope you still feel that way in a while. I hope…” she chuckled, “you still feel that way when we’re old.”

Her oldest son had gone to school with him. Still. He looked down at her. “You’re never going to be old.”

“I will. We all will, some day. Now…” A sound like thunder rumbling cut her off. She sat up as if she had not been half-asleep a moment ago. “Feltian, get to the nursery. You know what to do.”

“But…” He was already standing, and cut himself off before she could. “Yes, my lady wife. Be safe and be honorable.”

“Be safe.” She took his face in both hands and kissed his forehead. “And protect the children.”

Sefton swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.” He hurried back to the husbands’ wing, realizing only when he reached the nursery that he was both still naked and still damp from sex.

Luckily, Onter had thought of that. He passed Sefton in the hall, pressing a robe into his chained hands. “Be safe.”

“Safe and honorable,” Sefton muttered. The robe was split on the sides, letting him slide it on over the chains. He slid it on as Jaco opened the door to the nursery.

“Ready to wait in boredom?” Jaco grinned unrepentantly.

“No,” Sefton grumbled. “But I’ll do it.” He belted his robe, noting as he did that Taisiya hadn’t taken the time to chain him back to his waist-belt. Well, now wasn’t the time to bother someone. “Does this happen… well, often?”

“Maybe once every month.” Hothyan stepped forward, stance aggressive. “And here we are, hiding in the nursery.”

“Yeah.” Jaco took Hothyan’s shoulder and steered him back into the nursery. “Here we are, safe in the nursery, protecting the egglings. Have you counted?”

“Conderie’s looking for Lorthie, everyone else is here. Counted noses twice and I’ve been in the doorway since.”

“Good, good. How long’s Conderie been gone?”

“Just a minute. Lorthie darted off. You know how she is.”

“I do.” Jaco frowned. “All right, we have another couple minutes before we absolutely have to shut the door.” He sat in the chair next to the doorway where Hothyan clearly had been waiting. “I’ve got the door, you show junior here how we do things.”

“Why? They don’t have a nursery where he came from?”

“Because I said so. And I’m still an adult here, and, since you’re not all that eager for your chains, you’re still a kid. Show Feltian around. And stop blaming him for Isham. It’s not his fault.”

“Poor substitute, if you ask me,” Hothyan muttered.

“Nobody asked you. Go on, Hoth. Feltian, don’t mind him.”

“He’s right.” Sefton shrugged. “I’m certainly no Isham. Come on, Hothyan, show me around? I can’t replace Isham, I’m not going to try, but I can help defend the egglings.”

Hothyhan eyed him cautiously, as if looking for the trap. Sefton didn’t blame him; he’d have been doing the same in the kid’s shoes. He smiled a little, friendly, open, and hoped Hothyan didn’t focus too much on the fact that he was wearing a loose robe and still smelled like Taisiya.

There were some things the books didn’t warn you about or prepare you for, but Sefton remembered well enough when his mother’s youngest husband had come into the nursery, cheeks flushed and trying to hide the slightly-dazed grin.

Now was not the time to think about that; there was an attack going on. “What do we have for defenses in here?”

Hothyan hesitated another beat before nodding, as if to himself. “Right. Defense now, fight later,” he muttered. “There’s the doors, of course. They’re, I think they’re standard? Thick, reinforced, from the outside they look like an ordinary door? There’s one that looks like a vault door on the other side of the wing, and that usually distracts them for a while. Then here,” he walked through the nursery, navigating fallen toys and younger siblings. “Kiba, pick up those blocks and put them away. Lopthin, get the play kitchen tidy. Come on, we don’t want the new dad to think we’re slobs, do we?”

Kiba and Lopthin looked up at Sefton, eyeing him as if considering how much they cared about his opinions. Hothyan cleared his throat, and both boys hurried to do as they’d been told.

“You have them well in hand,” Sefton murmured.

“They’re good kids,” Hothyan countered. “They know what they ought to do, but at that age, the ‘oughts’ are often outweighed by the ‘wants’.” He glared up at Sefton, challenging him to question his little brothers.

Sefton was not stupid. “As it should be. They have years before husbandly responsibilities will be a question. Defenses?”

“Over here.” He opened a cupboard – the complex handle was out of small children’s reach, and, while that wouldn’t stop a determined enough child, it was also in line of sight of the main nursery. He folded open the doors. “This is our defense armory.”

Sefton hissed. There were weapons enough in there for a branch of the army – perhaps for the entire army. There were the nasty bladed long-poles preferred by the cavalry, the very short knives preferred by some of the infantry, two spiked maces, five blowguns and all their darts, and even three pistols, their ammunition stacked below them.

Seften had been trained in the use of all of those except the maces. He took a medium-length knife and a short blade and strapped their sheath-belts around his waist, feeling a little silly in bathrobe and weapons and more than a little naughty. Husbands did not fight. That was the whole point of husbands, of chains, of the husbands’ wing. And here he was, arming himself as he had been trained for, as he had been taught and then told never to do.

With luck, they would have a short and boring wait, and life would go back to that thing that was becoming normal very quickly.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1213581.html

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1209356.html. You can comment here or there.

Find Chapter 1 here
Chapter 2 is here
Chapter 3 is here
Chapter 4 is here
Chapter 5 is here
Chapter 6 is here
Chapter 7 is here.
Chapter 8: here
Chapter 9: here
Chapter 10: here

He was already erect. He wanted her to notice; he was terrified of her noticing.

Without breaking the kiss, she wrapped her hand around his shaft. Sefton moaned softly. Her hand felt perfect. How much nicer would… He faltered, blushed, but couldn’t look away.

“Boys play with other boys,” she whispered in his ear. “Now, lover, you get to find out what being taken by a real woman feels like. Do you want me?”

“Shells and stones, yes,” he gasped.

“Are you sure? It won’t be like it was with your good friends…”

“Please?” he keened it, his hips bucking up into her hand again. “Please, Taisiya?”

“Oh, you sweet man, I’m going to enjoy this. Beg for me a little, more, that’s it.” Her hands left him. Sefton’s eyes followed her, and his hand twitched under his head.

Begging, he could do. He licked his lips. “Please?” he moaned. “Please show me, my Lady, my… please, Taisiya, Show me what it can be like with you.”

“You really do want it, don’t you?” She slicked a little oil over him, her fingers sending shivers through his whole body, and over and in herself. Just watching her made Sefton moan again.

“Yes, oh, please.” His hips bucked as her fingers trailed over him again. “I’m… It’s been so long,” he added, almost a whisper, and then wished he’d kept it unsaid.

“Mmm, since your friends? And you a young man, all full of seed and eager. Do you want to put your seed in me, Feltian?”

He groaned, biting back responses that were crude, or rude, or worse. He closed his eyes instead, as her oil-slicked fingers played around the head of his cock and down to the base, leaving cool lines that soon heated up.

“Fair enough,” she chuckled, as if he’d answered her. “No more difficult questions, not for now. Kiss me, Feltian, darling.”

He could do that, and he did, pressing up to her lips while he tried to keep his hips from doing the same. He closed his eyes, stopped fighting his chains, and gave in to the way she touched him.

Her hands were like nothing he’d ever felt on him, and when she straddled him, still kissing him, Sefton felt a momentary frisson run through him. This wasn’t one of his friends at school. This was a woman and… and…

He kissed her again and tried not to panic. She was maneuvering, sliding him inside her and “Shells!” he gasped into the kiss.

“That’s it,” she whispered. She pressed one hand down on his chest, just below his throat, holding him in place, as if he needed the extra reminder. “Nice and slow, that’s good. You can move, if you want to.”

He hadn’t realized how still, how stiff he’d been holding himself until she reminded him. Slowly – more slowly than he thought possible – he rose up to meet her, finding her rhythm.

She gasped and groaned like a man might, little noises, stifled, and then loud ones when he found the right spot. Her spots were all different than any man, of course, but she still made lovely noises.

Sefton was a quick learner; he always had been. She kept him pinned down to the bed, but he could keep moving his hips and his legs, shifting his position, finding all the places that made her groan and gasp. “Beautiful noises,” he whispered, the way he would to one of his special friends, and he was too intent on what he was doing to even worry that he might offend her. “Oh, shells… soon,” he added in a quiet grunt.

“Yes,” she agreed. She grabbed his hips with both hands and pulled, urging him on. “Come on, yes, that’s it, now. Now!”

There was no arguing with that tone, and Sefton’s body had no interest in the argument anyway. He thrust up into her, again and again, and shuddered, falling back down to the bed, eyes closed, panting. “Shells,” he panted quietly, not capable of thought more complicated than that.

Chapter 12: Aftermath – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1209356.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1205527.html. You can comment here or there.

Find Chapter 1 here
Chapter 2 is here
Chapter 3 is here
Chapter 4 is here
Chapter 5 is here
Chapter 6 is here
Chapter 7 is here.
Chapter 8: here
Chapter 9: here

“Show me what comes next, in your books.”

That was an order, and it was an order Sefton understood. He knelt at Taisiya’s feet again, and kissed the outside of each of her ankles. “You are beautiful, my Lady Wife,” he murmured. It was what was in the books, but it was also true. He kissed her calves. “You are strong, and I trust you.” He thought he might, actually. And she had been stronger than he’d expected, so far. He kissed her knees, pushing her robe aside to touch his lips to each knee in turn. “You are flexible, and I honor you.” Her knees were close together; he looked up at her, blushing a bit. “Next comes your thighs,” he offered, hoping she wouldn’t make him ask.

“Does it go all the way up?”

“It does.”

“With, what, wifely virtues? Did you get that out of a book? I can’t imagine a demonstration.”

“A book,” he nodded. “It’s, ah, Toma of Red-Iron’s Seven Ways to be a Proper Husband.“

“I’m going to have to check that out of the downtown library,” she commented, but it didn’t seem directed to Sefton. “Well, Feltian, if you’d like, we can move to the bed, but you don’t need to continue to praise my virtues. Do you really think I’m flexible?”

“I always thought that was a strange one,” he mused. “Strength, beauty, wealth, fertility, energy, yes. But flexibility. Am I saying that your mind moves to interesting places? It seems really, um, rude of me to comment on how flexible your body is.”

“I’m more and more interested in this book,” she admitted. “In the meantime, flexibility of thought is probably a good virtue from a husband’s point of view, since there are often so many of you, and, especially in the earlier times, the balance of power was a bit… different.”

“It was?” Sefton had never heard anything about that.

“Some day, if you’re good – which I have a feeling you will be – I’ll show you my history books, the older ones.” She laughed at his expression. “I have learned how to bribe you, it looks like. You really should have gone to the Academy, shouldn’t you have?”

“I’m where my family needs me to be.” His cheeks flushed. “That’s all that really matters.”

“What a very filial viewpoint. And I’m afraid I’ve killed the mood.” She stood up and offered him her hands. “So… today, I’m going to show you what I like, how does that sound? And next time you come to me, I want you to have thought of one thing that you like in bed, and show me that.”

“Yes, Taisiya.” He couldn’t quite look at her, and his cheeks were still burning. Something he… no. Something else? “What would you like me to do?”

“Well, first,” she caught the chain between his wrists and did something with the little clasp in the center, so that his wrists were no longer locked to his waist. “There, that gives you enough movement, I think. Lay down on the bed, and put your hands behind your head.”

“Yes, Taisiya,” he repeated. He lay down carefully on her wide bed and settled the chain between his wrists at the back of his neck, then clasped his hands.

He wasn’t any more helpless than he had been before she unlocked the chains from his waist, but it felt a hundred times more exposed. He watched her, not moving and not saying anything, and speculated on what might come next.

She straddled his legs, and it seemed as if she was considering the same question. “You’ve never been with a woman before, have you?”

He was reaching the point where he wasn’t shocked by her questions anymore. Sefton still had to swallow a couple times before he could answer. “No, no ma’am.”

“With men?”

“…a little.” It happened a lot in school, and nobody really considered it sex. “Especially the last couple months…”

“Ah. You had a good friend, didn’t you?”

He blinked at her. It made sense she would know what boys called their lovers, since she seemed to know everything else, and yet… “Yeah. Two, actually. And…” He trailed off, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Two of us were getting married, so…”

“So you had to fit it all in. Of course.” She leaned over and stroked his hair, the folds of her robe brushing against his skin. “I just wanted to know what sort of experience you’d had. So… you’d kiss them, of course.”

Only good friends kissed. You might have something furtive and wet with someone in the locker room, but you didn’t kiss unless it was serious.

“Show me? Kiss me like I’m one of your good friends?”

Sefton licked his lips. Well, it didn’t get much more serious than marriage, he reasoned. “Of course, my Lady.” He leaned up as she leaned down, opened his mouth to her tongue, and kissed her.

She tasted different than his friends at school – sweeter, with, of course, no facial hair to get in the way. Her tongue was rougher and more determined. She was holding the back of his neck, too, pressing him to her.

Sefton gasped. She was almost as rough as his friends had been, her fingers strong on his neck. He liked it – no, more than liked it. He wanted more. He pressed up against her, squirming. He pulled against the chains, wanting to touch her, to hold her. His hips rose up to meet her.

Next bit will be R-rated. I’ll put it aside in its own chapter for those that prefer not to read the smexy stuff. Here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1205527.html

You can skip the R-rated part without losing the plot.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1189727.html. You can comment here or there.

Chapter 9 in my answer to the “guy has umpteen wives” trope
Find Chapter 1 here
Chapter 2 is here
Chapter 3 is here
Chapter 4 is here
Chapter 5 is here
Chapter 6 is here
Chapter 7 is here.
Chapter 8: here

“All right. We’ll start with what you know. Come over here.” She stood up and walked to the center of her room, where cushions were scattered over the floor in what romance novels told Sefton was the Western style. “Show me how you were trained to greet your wife upon seeing her for the first time in a day.”

Sefton fought back a blush. This was easy. He was going to do it wrong, she was going to tell him it was horrible, but the basics of it, that was simple. He walked over to her and dropped to his knees on a cushion, dropping his head and folding his hands in front of him. He’d been taught to take her hands, but the chains wouldn’t allow that from this position. “My lady wife,” he murmured – low voice, soft voice, asking attention, not demanding it – “I’m glad to see you.”

She ran her hands through his hair and hummed thoughtfully. Sefton wanted to look up at her, but, given the position, couldn’t really. “That’s sweet. I can imagine it getting old after a few months, but it’s sweet.”

“Does that mean…” Sefton worked around his dry throat. “Would you like me to do that?”

“Let’s save that for times when you haven’t seen me in a while. And, Feltian? Only if you really are glad to see me. No ironic, showy kneeling when you don’t mean it.”

“That’s Jaco’s job, then?”

…what was wrong with him?

She snorted at him. “That’s Jaco’s job, good enough. Or we could say – I have a husband who is sarcastic and angry all the time. I do not really want another one. Does that make sense?”

Sefton bowed his head. “Yes, ma’.. yes, my wife.”

“Now that’s an interesting one. All right. For every day, how do you feel about kisses?”

Did she mean… She’d already made him tell her about that! And… “Taisiya?” he offered, as respectfully as he could.

“Oh, you’re really a sweet darling. It’s a pity they’ve gotten you all wrapped up in nerves and proprietary.”

“Its, uh. It’s better than being a wild mudlark who only comes inside to eat and can’t be bothered to ever wash his feet?” he offered.

“That sounds like a quote, and also like a story.”

“I,” Sefton coughed and ducked his head further, turning it into a bit of a bow. “I didn’t want to come inside, when it was time for boys to come inside and learn how to be husbands.”

“Interesting. And when do you think that is?”

“I- I was twelve, ma’am, Taisiya, and my voice had just started to creak.”

“Very interesting. Do you think it helped?”

He risked looking up at her. Nothing here was going anything like it was supposed to. “I’m sorry…?”

“Coming inside, cleaning up, learning how to be a husband. You’re a husband now; did it help?”

He whimpered. “I… I did my duty. I did what I was supposed to.”

She sighed. “Oh, Feltian, what am I going to do with you?”

He flinched. This was not how his wedding night was supposed to be going. This wasn’t how anything was supposed to be going. He fell back on her wedding vows. “Cherish, contain, protect?” he offered quietly. “Direct and comfort, and, uh…” the next line in the vows had to do with offspring.

“They’re pretty dry vows, aren’t they? And so one-sided.”

“I don’t have anything to, anything to pledge,” he offered quietly. He’d thought about that, more than once. “Everything I have is given to you.”

“Your future.” she touched his cheek. “That’s what made Jaco so mad. His parents, his mother, she gave away his future. Your mother gave me yours. All that’s left is your will.”

He held up the chains on his wrists. “I gave you that, too.”

“Jaco is chained. Does it look to you like his will is mine?”

Sefton bit back his first response and considered it. “Yes. He could leave. The chains, even Jaco’s, they’re strong, but ten minutes with the right tools and they’d be open. His egglings — that would be hard for most men, but that’s a choice, too. We choose to be here.” He lifted his chin, realizing something his father had told him, and what it really meant. “I didn’t fight the chains. I accepted them. I didn’t run when my mother told me I would be married…. To someone her age,” he added, as gently as he could.

“But where would you go? To the raiders? To the sea? There aren’t that many places where an unchained man can find shelter and solace, much less employment.”

“I didn’t say it was a good choice,” Sefton admitted. “It’s always a choice, even, to agree to sacrifice everything to join one of the locked orders. Even — I mean, no.” He faltered, swallowed, and tried again. “Everyone can do that.”

“Even women,” Taisiya filled in. Her voice was contemplative. “It sounds as if you’ve given this some thought.”

“One of my other brothers, he ran away. We don’t talk about it, mostly we try to pretend it didn’t happen. We — they, my mother, I guess — got him back, but he was, well, he’d been with the bandits. She pulled some strings, quite a few strings, and got him a low-level position in the Academy. It shouldn’t have happened. It probably should have been my slot,” he added, much more quietly. “But Saltef needed it, and I — I didn’t need it, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted it.”

“No? Most men would be happy with a position in the Academy or the Military.”

“Most men don’t really think about it, I think. I wanted — well, I wanted the romance-novel.” He ducked his head and tried to hide his blush with his hair. “I wanted a Wife, you know?”

“I have some idea,” she admitted. “I’ve read some of the books. They’re not really intended for female audiences, but I knew I was going to be married. I knew I was going to have several husbands. My mother was affluent, I was her oldest daughter, and there was an open land in the family. It made sense that I was going to have to deal with several men, and that they’d probably be strangers to me.”

Sefton stared at her for a moment. “You read… romance books… so that you’d…” He considered that. “I’d never thought about the fact that women are sort of stuck, too. I mean…”

“We have a great deal of power. We get to wander out into the world, we make business decisions, and we do have a lot more say in who we marry than men do.” Taisiya nodded. “And yet… We’re still getting married. We’re still going to have as many egglings as we can, and hope that they survive.” Her voice caught, and she sighed. “I am not giving you a wedding night very worthy of a romance novel, I’m afraid. But… I didn’t want to start out in such a way as I couldn’t continue.”

Sefton nodded. He wasn’t sure what else to do. “You’re explaining things. Is this, um. Is this a thing that can continue?” He felt a little out-of-place, even asking.

She smiled. Hopefully, that was a good sign and she wasn’t just softening the blow before he was relegated to some basement kitchen for the next year for cheek. . “That is a good question, and one that I like.” She leaned in and kissed his forehead. “Yes. I like explaining things, actually. It makes me feel like I’m not just barking orders and expecting immediate responses like some military sergeant. “And telling you how I’d like things, I’ll continue that, too.” She hesitated, and Sefton was suddenly worried there would be a but that he wouldn’t like. “The things your family taught you, they’re not bad. I’ll try to remember how you’ve been taught – and I’m never going to punish you for trying your best to be a good husband, Feltian. You’re a good man, and your family did your best. It’s neither their fault nor yours that I’m a little… anomalous.”

“They probably thought,” he offered, very cautiously, “that with the changing of the names, and, uh, they thought that you cloister your husbands… so they probably believed you were very old-fashioned.”

She chuckled. “Very tactfully put. Those are very old-fashioned things, I agree. I don’t so much cloister my husbands as I allow them to hide here if they want it – which Onter definitely does. Jaco is still angry, so I keep him at home to keep him from starting a fight that would get us all in a mess. You… that will be up to you, I suppose. What kind of husband you want to be once the chains come off.”

“If they come off,” he muttered, and then shook his head hastily. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“Of course you meant it. And it’s fine. I don’t really expect you to be on perfect manners all the time.”

“But if I’m not…” He took a breath and then plowed ahead. “You, um. This name. So that I knew I was married. Perfect manners are like that.”

She took a moment, her lips moving. “I gave you the name as a reminder that you belong to me now.”

“Yeah.”

“And you like the manners for the same reason, to remind you that you’re a husband now?”

“Yeah, exactly… mistress. Ma’am. My lady wife.” One of them would stick, if he tried enough titles. “I don’t want to, well,I don’t wanna treat you like I’m just hanging out in the older boys’ dorm with my brothers or something, or at school. You’re special. You’re, well, the rest of my life. And I don’t want to screw that up. I’ve heard…” He fell silent.

“We’ve all heard the horror stories,” she assured him. “For the most part, that’s all they are, stories. Most women aren’t going to lock you in the basement or sell you to the raiders or set you to horrible manual labor for the rest of your life, no matter how badly you mess up. For one, we tend to know your mothers, and there’s a certain amount of understanding that we treat each other’s sons and brothers the way we’d want our own to be treated… within limits, of course.”

“Limits,” he offered cautiously. “Like taste. Or that you don’t expect Isham’s wife to be as interested in having someone talk back to her as you are?”

She chuckled. “Things like that. We’ve gotten very far afield. And it still is your wedding night. So, show me what comes next, in your books.”

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