Pieces for Later

[sincere]

Just sort of holding onto these.


I just love this, totally gratuituously.

"Shall we be partners?" Oren asked casually.

Jareth looked morose. He often did. "You don't think it would make us look too suspicious?"

"There will be thousands of men there, Jareth," Oren said, dismissing the concern. "These people are preparing for war. They don't exactly have the sort of time or resources necessary to conduct thorough background checks on every pair of mismatched mercenaries who volunteer their services."

Privately, Oren thought they were a mismatched pair indeed. Both of them were big men, tall and broad and powerful, but Oren played the part of casual and friendly -- if somewhat irresponsible -- mercenary to the hilt; as far as he could tell, Jareth was disguised as Jareth. Which meant he was disguised as a morally upright citizen of confidence and pride, serious to extremes and overly formal, and much, much too good a man to be a mercenary.

But the first several hardened mercenaries who had challenged the seemingly soft newcomer had found themselves brutally beaten down in the midst of an elegant dance of fists that would have been deadly if he'd bothered to draw his silver blade, and no one had questioned him since.

"As you say, Your Grace," Jareth began reluctantly.

Oren sighed. "Wren," he corrected. "And you are Jakareth."

"Called Jakareth."

"Yes, of course." They had been friends too long for Oren to even consider arguing. The first rule of Jareth's order of holy knighthood was that a paladin told no lies. That was part of the reason why Oren had decided not to become a paladin. "Let's go and sign up. With any luck, one of the strategists I know will be managing the recruits, and I can get some information on how they're going to manage their offensive."

Jareth nodded, striding a bit further to put himself equal with Oren as they moved into the sprawling camp. "I imagine they'll want to target Duke Pelagia first," he said, just as if he weren't speaking to the man himself. "You've heard the rumors."

He had to grin. The rumors made him proud to be himself. "The ones about his limitless supply of gold, his immense fortifications, and service as right hand to the King of Arcasha himself? The rumors that speak of him as a beast, eight feet tall and strong enough to wrestle a bear, with a broadsword that could cleave solid walls without effort? Those rumors?"

Soldiers around them quieted, fearful. Jareth gave him a look of stern reproach. "Yes," he said. "Those."

Oren grinned. "I bet he's got a tool to shame a horse," he added, and was rewarded with scattered laughs from the soldiers that had settled at the sides of the path. "Rumors make him sound more like a god than a man. Exaggerations."

Certainly exaggerations -- he'd never actually swung his broadsword at a wall before. For some reason it had never seemed like a good idea.

"To shame a horse?" Jareth echoed.

"Probably not that big," Oren admitted.



She had to be written for.

"For the King!" the men cried in Aramaic.

"For the King!" cried others in Persian.

"Will you not show your loyalty?" asked a commander disapprovingly.

"Our loyalty is known to the only one who need know," she said without looking at him. The aides whispered behind her while she ducked to lace up her boots. She did not bother listening; she knew what they had to say.

A younger man, tentative, came up to her and asked, "Do you require the use of armor?" He flushed red when her gaze turned on him.

"This one does not require armor," she told him.

"But, well... If you are the one they call the Hunter, will you not be out on the front lines?"

"Such is the position this one will serve."

He seemed confused. "Your..."

Your clothes seem inadequate to the task, he wanted to say; she could hear it in his mind. He thought she belonged in the harem of a sultan, envisioned her dancing in currents of silk, moving under a man -- a man, who would of course be stronger and more reliable and show her where her place was.

The Hunter grinned at him, baring her teeth. "Your concern is appreciated," she said. "This one needs none of your armor."

The enemy howled across the battlefield, and the soldiers of the empire rallied, roaring back their defiance. She did not say a word, only drawing the scimitars that hung around her waist as the opposing army charged them. She did not speak another word that day; she killed in silence, dark eyes narrowed in concentration, lithe body moving like the silk she was clad in as she brought down all who came before her.

Two men marked her. She left them in agony.

At the end of the day the young soldier found her again, stepping over corpses with blades in hand, checking, endlessly patient, though she already knew she would find no lingering life there. Her weapons were stained with blood, her airy clothes and nutmeg skin splattered with it. The wounds she had received were nearly gone.

"What are you?" he asked in wonder. "Are you a demon?"

She did not answer him, absently rubbing at the cloth she had tied over the crown of her head, heated in the midday sun. The bracelets around her wrists clattered against one another, laughing.

"I watched you today." He nearly tripped on the body of the commander who had censured her earlier; she had not noticed him die. "You were-- like fire, like wind. What are you? Who are you?"

His heart beat in her ears.

"This one is the Hunter," she told him.

"What is your name?" he asked, quiet. In his mind he envisioned her dancing in a whirlwind of blades, moving under him with wild abandon. No longer a harem girl, but one who belonged in his arms.

She thought for a moment, and said, "You may call this one Amina." It meant 'truthful'.

His eyes lit, and he seemed about to speak again, when a voice called, "Salafi!"

The Hunter turned immediately, for the first time allowing emotion to touch her face. The man who came now wore rich ornamented armor, rode a horse of brilliant color, and had a face like a god. She sank gracefully to her knees and touched her forehead to the ground, mindless of the dirt. "Master," she said.

"King Darius," the soldier murmured in awe.

"Young-- Karosh, is it?" The emperor reigned in close to them, pausing before her prostrate form. "I hope Salafi has not given you any trouble. Battle is not his strong point, but he assures me that he is much better in this body."

She said nothing. The soldier looked stricken.

Darius ignored him, looking around the battlefield appraisingly. "My ministers are already drawing up the annexation. It seems that you have done more than your share here. You have served me well, my own," he told her, fond.

A thrill went through her, just the words granting her a delight that she could never have explained to a mere human. "This one lives to serve, Master," she breathed to the ground, and he laughed and bade her to rise.

Perhaps as a tribute to the soldier's hopeless longing, Salafi waited until the boy could no longer see them before he resumed his favored form, and was the Hunter no more.



Inspired by zinniazayda~

There had always been those masters who did not like him.

All his graces and all his etiquette, perfected over centuries and millennia and eons, could not turn their favor. These were humans who saw him and knew him for what he was, powerful in spite of his slavery, superior in spite of his humility, and they loathed him for it.

They were the clever ones. They wanted it all, and they knew that always they would die, and that the djinn who had given them everything would move on without ever a tear.

They were too clever for their own happiness. Salafi had never learned how to cry.

He remembers one of them.

A man, tall and cruelly beautiful. He would stand in front of his window every day and look out upon the city that belonged to him and he thought. Every day Salafi would kneel at the foot of the three small steps that led up to the window, and he would wait, unmoving and unspeaking and patient, for his master's word.

Every day, when he was content with his private thoughts, the Master would speak.

"It is within your power to explain to me the reasons for earthquakes," he would say.

Or, "It is within your power to create the beauty of a sunset," he would say.

Or, "It is within your power to tell me what the trees whisper."

And every day, Salafi would give his Master what he wanted, sharing secrets of the universe with him, and wondering. None of the things his Master ever asked for made him happy, and Salafi's purpose was to make his Master happy.

The war began from within. There were whispers, rumors of the lord's alliances with enemy states and, far worse, dark powers beyond mortal comprehension; tales stretched infinitely tall of his warlock's magic and the demons at his command. But were there were frightened and superstitious humans, there would always be practical ones, who believed in only what they had experienced, and in the end those who whispered caution retreated to hide in the shadows. Men in the city rose up as one and attacked in a great mass, battering the walls of the manor and engaging the guardsmen with their crude implements.

Salafi needed hear only one command, that day: the single furious command, from his Master's lips: "This is nothing to one of your power. Go."

Many men died that day.

It took nearly a week for the furor to die down, and the resentment lasted longer. The guard tracked down the rebels, crushing the city beneath iron-reinforced boot heels, and during that time, every day, the lord went to the window to look out upon the city that belonged to him, and he grew more and more angry.

By the end of the week Salafi could feel his Master's touch on the magic lamp scar him deep, as if it reached directly into his soul and sickened him. He longed not to move, to curl up with the chills that swept his overheating body and wrap his arms over the roiling upset in his stomach, but when it was time he went to the window, as he knew he must. His Master's angered grip on the vessel ordered him without words to do so.

There, looking out upon a city burned indelible red with fire and blood, his Master said coldly, "It is within my power to destroy you."

The djinn was weak, distracted, could barely comprehend the words. He got to his feet, as he always did -- if less elegant than his usual sweeping rise -- and murmured, "Master?"

"I know where the true strength is here." Fury, blind and staggering, channeled through his Master, burrowing into the djinn mercilessly through the vessel. He could feel it burning him. "I know where we two stand."

Deceptively gentle fingers turned Salafi's lamp between them; it felt like those fingers were dragged through his intestines, unsettling him to the depths of his being, and he had to bite back a moan as his vision began to blur.

"The power is all yours," the lord whispered, the Master. "If it had not been for you, I would be dead right now, or a fugitive. It's only because I have you that I still live. MY power... means nothing."

"Master," said Salafi, fighting his tone as even as he could make it. "This one lives to serve you-- Our power is yours--"

The Master snarled, "The only power that belongs to me is this!"

He raised the lamp above his head -- arm tensed, coiled, as if --

All at once the remnants of strength left Salafi; he crashed to his knees, scrabbling for his oh-so-agile intellect and his happy-go-lucky charm; he found nothing. He didn't know what would happen if his bound oil lamp were smashed, but the idea filled him with terror, blinding and staggering and his own, for the first time in as long as he could remember.

"This one would do anything for you," Salafi managed. He couldn't stand. He couldn't stop shaking. "This one belongs to you, values your happiness above all else-- Would serve you for as long as you live--"

"And after that?" came the response, venomous.

Nothing changed, but it made sense suddenly.

/Ah,/ Salafi thought to himself. /He has remembered that he is mortal./ He is afraid. Somewhere inside he almost wanted to laugh. What was death to be afraid of, compared to the sort of shattering oblivion and infinite madness that only one such as Salafi could experience? Salafi had been beyond death; he knew that there was nothing to fear in such sleep. /Really, humans are such delicate creatures./

Very quietly, the djinn asked, "Would it please you if this one were to be afraid of you?"

It was all still for a very long moment. Salafi held his breath, fear and laughter quivering in his throat, waiting for the moment when everything would be decided.

His Master did not answer, but he slowly lowered his arm. The pulse of his hatred still shivered in Salafi's soul; the human was clever, too clever, could see that his slave mocked him even in his humility, knew that the djinn could understand him in a way that was both vital and dangerous.

When the lord stepped forward, Salafi braced himself for physical violence. Far better than violence to his lamp, which he could not heal, could not mend.

But instead a hand descended to his head, caressing his hair almost tenderly. The djinn shut his eyes, wanting to block out all his senses. He could feel himself relax immediately, melting under his Master's touch, affected to a ridiculous degree by even such an insincere gesture.

Just as quietly, his Master said, "Yes... That will do."

Salafi would never see the man again. He grew tired shortly after that, and never gave a second thought to his sudden urge to sleep, and when he awoke he belonged to a new Master, and promptly dismissed the old one from his mind.

The impression stayed with him, though, even centuries after the man's death.

A slave was a slave for a reason. Sometimes humans could be too clever for their own good, and worried themselves about things no one need worry about. Even if he was stronger than his master, there was no doubt who held the power over whom.

Salafi is getting a third piece. Salafi on war, and power, and shortly love. zinniazayda made me do it.