It is no simple task to be a man of learning without the finances to attend university. The king seems to have little interest in the commoner’s well-being—a trait I wish were reciprocated!—, and I had been caught stealing in to private lectures oft enough to have earned a certain infamy for such behavior. Infamy intermingled with a begrudging respect, I would hope.
     Thus was I absolutely delighted to hear that the much-discussed and controversial team that was Mr. & Mrs. Goldsworth was to be giving an introductory lecture in the city’s public garden, free of charge to the general public.
     I cleared my schedule—quite full it was, between writing unpublishable poetry and irritating passerby with its recitation—and pulled my finest-and-only suit jacket from the trunk at the foot of my bed.
     With joy I walked through the squalor and into the famed garden. Not even the drunken youth, with their bullying, could bring down my mood. Not even the rich in their horseless, steaming carriages, splashing mud and unhappiness onto us urban peasants.
     The gardens were in their early-summer bloom, the evening sun bringing bright the lilac and lavender—oh! lavender, that finest of flowers. It was one of those days when birds sung for the poor and shat on the rich, one of those days when the young couples could hold hands in my sight and no jealousy stabbed through my heart.
     I saw benches had been arranged under a gabled pavilion. I was early, as is my habit, and the attendants numbered two: a young man and woman—clearly, neither over my twenty-six years. The young man wore the jaunty attire of the day’s intellectual youth, much as I did myself; a smart black cap, highwaisted breeches reaching just below the knee. He might have been my double if he were not full-bearded and shockingly handsome. The breadth of his shoulders, the narrow waist, the kind eyes that begged your confidence.
     And yet his friend nearly outshone him. Her skin was two shades darker than either his or my own, with doe-eyes and fashionably short hair. She wore no bustle, no corset, and she sat with her legs uncrossed, her skirt reaching nearly to the floor.
     I’m afraid social interactions have never been my strong point; I was staring. I had walked up, seen them seated and conversing, stopped not three paces distant and looked them both up and down, hovering on their faces, oblivious to their reactions.
     He caught my eye, and I snapped out of my reverie, embarrassed. “My apologies…” I mumbled.
     “Not at all,” the woman said, offering her hand.
     “Christopher,” the man introduced himself, “and this is my wife, Sand.”
     Formalities were exchanged, with the slight casualness we youth-intellectuals—our culture needs a finer name!—had a tendency to observe.
     Within a few minutes others began to arrive, and soon the lecture began. In case you had not conjectured, these two, Christopher and Sand, were none other than Mr. & Mrs. Goldsworth themselves!
     I had earned my front row seat with my timeliness, and listened rapt while they presented. So convincing were their words, so astounding were their proposals, that I completely forgot to stare at their luscious forms. I admit, however, that at a certain point Christopher reached into his pants to adjust himself, and I was lost in brief fantasy.

“If I show you this,” and Christopher drew a square upon slate with a piece of chalk, “would you call it a circle?”
     “No!” shouted someone from the back. No question is too rhetorical for the crowd at a free lecture in the park, it seems.
     “Of course not. And this?” he drew a hexagon.
     “No!”
     “But how about this?” he drew a decagon.
     “No.”
     “And yet with each new illustration, are we not getting closer to a circle? The hexagon may have more sides than a square, but it more closely resembles the single-edged circle. Of course, no matter how many more sides we add, we will never obtain a circle.”
     Sand stood up at her husband’s side and spoke: “This is, perhaps, the crux of our argument. Science has, until now, been in the process of adding sides to squares. You’ll notice that nature doesn’t have much to say about squares.”
     “There is an interesting new hypothesis in mathematics. If one were to create a function, and give it the non-intuitive property of being everywhere continuous and nowhere differentiable—” Christopher put the slate in front of him and began to draw.
     I was lost. I looked about, and I noticed I was not the only one.
     “What my husband means is that if you take a shape, and constantly repeat it, in smaller and smaller incarnations around its edge, you have a shape that approaches infinity.”
     Christoper held up the slate. On it was a triangle, a Star of David, and what was, essentially, a Star of David with little Stars of David branching out from the spikes.
     “Well it looks like a plant!”
     “That’s nothing closer to a circle!”
     You know, although I’ve got a fair amount in common with the rest of that audience, I sometimes understand why those university types lock their doors on the poor.
     Sand handled the comments with grace. “Like a plant is perfectly right. This is how things in nature grow. These shapes, not squares, are the building blocks of nature, the building blocks of infinity.”
     I’m going to skip ahead a bit now, to some of their final points. I like what they had to say a lot, and I want to let you know, but I also want to get on with the story. I promised you “tied to the tree” and rather complex sexual positioning.
     “What we’ve got in our society is a science built on squares and right angles. These are great shapes to use when you’re protecting yourself from nature, but they won’t incorporate you into it. Our little stone cities of cubes and triangles are our eggshells, but we’d best get on to hatching, or we’ll never grow up. Or they’ll become our prison.” Sand gestured out towards the towers that cut into the skyline.
     “Right now we’ve got this useless duality, of city and nature. I’m not saying we’re going to reject science, that we’re going to reject stone buildings and clocks. But we’re going to grow up, grow into a chaotic, organic form of thinking, where we branch off our ideas, stick with the ones that gather more sunlight. Leave behind our pyramids of thought, where each generation builds on the ideas of the old, getting smaller and smaller…”
     I didn’t hear the last couple sentences she spoke, because she was drowned out by applause. That’s one thing that probably doesn’t happen in the lecture halls.

I hung back and let others be the first to mob the speakers when they were done. I watched the sun set from the edge of the pavilion, thinking lyric and rhyme amidst the chatter.
     “What did you think?” Christopher asked, putting his hand on my shoulder.
     I turned and answered, “I think you and your wife are geniuses. But genius isn’t the right word… do we call the sun a genius? This lavender… is it genius?”
     Alright, look. I never claimed I wasn’t a piss-poor poet, and I never claimed that I wasn’t quite taken with thought that may seep with pretension. But if I’m going to tell a dirty story, I may as well be honest. You’ll see as much of my naked mind as my naked body.
     But Christopher smiled. I think he knew what I was getting at. “We’re doing a series of lectures this week at the University—”
     My eyes lit up in hope.
     “I can’t get you in, but… hold on a second, let me ask Sand something.”
     He disappeared and I turned back towards the sun, that dying genius of light, occupying myself in thought.
     This time, when Christopher came over he stood next to me, looked out the same way I was looking. “I just had to check. Anyhow, the University is giving us use of a zeppelin for the weekend, to allow us to go home if we desire. And we were thinking we’d go camping. We’d like you to join us.”
     I wanted to ask why? why me?, but I’ve learned by now in my life not to question such things. With all the steadiness of voice and general lack of bluster I could summon, I accepted their offer.
     Gaily I skipped home. No, not even the mud and sadness that the rich in their horseless horrors splashed onto me could dampen my spirits. I tell you in no uncertain terms that I wanted to have a place within the intelligentsia. Particularly, the section of it that gives free talks in the park, the part that uses the might of their brains to challenge and destroy the massive, structural faults of society. I wanted to be close to the beautiful, the passionate, and the wise.
     And with a growing sense of urgency, I wanted to be inside the beautiful, passionate and wise. It was with such thoughts that I relieved myself that evening.

That week I wrote sixteen poems. Whenever possible, I prefer to write a poem, perform it twice, thrice, and soon be done with it. Never let your work become precious. My mother, the potter, taught me as such. A potter will tell you that they made sixteen bowls, and no one will think them odd. Why is a poet any different?
     I was inspired, and I veritably sang as I recited. I made eating money and lodging money and even the money I needed for mead to bring on the trip.
     Friday evening found me walking up the airship tower, pondering poetry as the people shrunk beneath me. Ahead, the Goldsworths spoke in hushed tones, carrying their own luggage as I carried mine. The assigned porter looked more or less confused, and walked beside me.
     I don’t suppose one can feel as magnanimous as one does when there is a servant around whom you refuse to boss or encumber. But I don’t have much experience with such things, and I’m not likely to again.
     And we embarked, just the three of us. Christopher, as well as a remarkable mathematician, was the son of an aviator. He steered and navigated, delegating simpler tasks to the two of us.
     Yes, the several-hour trip was breathtaking, only my third time in the sky and the first time with any sort of freedom to speak of. But of more import to the story, that evening we dropped anchor—quite a thing from a few hundred meters aloft!—, lowered provisions, and descended a ladder while harnessed to the ship for safety. Right into the middle of a wild nowhere, right into a forest the likes of which I’d never imagined, but one that spoke to me in some primeval way.
     Sand was upset by the damage to the undergrowth caused by the anchor, I remember, and Christopher offered no justification. It was clear that he bore more of a love for the workings of science, and was more prone to forgive it its faults.
     We set up a single large canvas tent, one sized to fit a family of five with comfort, and Christopher began to build a fire. “I’m going to cook dinner,” he said, “and you two should get out of my hair.”
     Sand led me down a game path during the first moments of twilight, twisting her way past briars and over fallen logs whilst I stumbled behind her. “Up here,” she said, when I had fallen behind.
     I turned past the silhouette of a tree and came to a sudden halt. In front of me lay a lake, thin and long, its surface whipped about by the night’s bluster. Next to me stood Sand, her short hair revealing a beautiful neck, her working-woman’s overall-dress exposing her collarbones and shoulders. Everything lay open before me; the clouds were retreating at full bore, and stars twinkled.
     Sand bent down and picked a mushroom from the side of a fallen log. “This,” she said, handing it to me—it was barely distinguishable as yellow in the twilight—, “this is part of what we were talking about. The mushroom isn’t the plant. The plant is a vast network of invisible threads that weave their way through the forest. The mushroom is just a manifestation of those threads. It’s like the fruit on the tree.”
     I held the mushroom up to look closer, as if I could somehow see into the infinity their chaotic mathematical philosophical ideas presented by staring at the fungus. Sand placed her arm around my waist, and I was struck once more by how much I missed the touch of a person. I had been too long alone, far too long.
     “So when people decide they want something that looks like this, they build the mushroom, but not its threads. The whole forest is like the mushroom, too. This forest… we need to stop thinking about ‘this tree, that tree,’ because all of the trees here are interwoven. They depend on each other. Hell, they’re not really separate entities. Not really.”
     I think she was making a metaphorical point that bordered on the blasphemous, obscene, and potentially sexual. I was aroused.
     Sand kissed me lightly on the neck. “I bet dinner is ready.”

As the remains of the finely prepared seafood digested in my happy belly, I washed the dishes in a metal basin—and this amount of work I had only because I insisted! Next to me, Sand scraped the food remains into a hole she had dug.
     “D—,” she said after we’d both finished, “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. But we wanted to ask you… do you like men at all?”
     “Yeah,” I said. My eyes kept wandering down the top of her dress, where her uncovered, small breasts were quite visible, hanging petite and lovely. I did my best to look at her face, which was smiling. She seemed anxious, nervous.
     “Would you like to have sex with the two of us tonight?”
     I swallowed, and I’m pretty certain I stammered. “Yeah.”
     She unclipped one side of her overalls, and the front folded down, clearly exposing her tit. The nipple, large and brown, stood out. She stood on her toes and kissed my mouth, briefly. “Good,” she said into my ear.
     My hand went immediately to the side of her bare waist, squeezing her gently. She stood back and unclipped the other side of her overalls and was shirtless before me. I knelt before her and put my mouth on her belly. I could smell her getting wet, I swear to you.
     She put her hands into my hair, and tousled it while I licked her hipbones and massaged them with my thumbs. She was very thin, almost bony, but carried enough weight on her hips that it was a joy to knead and touch.
     She tightened her grip on my head and told me to take her dress off. It was awkward, working the fly buttons with my head so close to them, but I had no desire to move my face from that lovely smell. Eventually, the buttons were undone and her heavy canvas dress fell down of its own weight.
     “My bloomers too,” she said, and my hands were quick to the ties at the side. These too soon lay at her feet. I ran my hand up her legs, cupping the mound of her cunt as I happily licked her belly.
     I heard Christopher come up behind me, and for a moment I hesitated. What if he didn’t actually want me pleasuring his wife? But then he was pulling my shirt off, and I raised my hands to let it go.
     The slight breeze was chill against my bare skin, and soon a bearded face was kissing my shoulder. I moved my mouth lower and started to lick Sand’s cunt, but it was an awkward position.
     Christopher departed—I could tell because his mouth was no longer working its way around the back of my neck—and returned with a leather camping mattress, which he unrolled beside me. I lay down on my back, and Sand knelt over my mouth, facing away from my feet. I grabbed her bare thighs, dug in my nails, and began to lick her in earnest.
     It was, of course, all very sudden. But how do you work out the playful introduction to sex—the caresses and light touching—with three people, in the forest? I’ve little experience in such matters. And I certainly had no objections. Kissing and holding would come in due course.
     Christopher stood above my head and held Sand’s hands, helping her balance as she rode my face. It was, in its way, quite romantic for the two of them, as I think of it now. But at the time, I was quite blissfully licking and fingering a most marvelous cunt, one whose taste still lingers in my mind.
     I was, of course, frightfully hard, and it was a pleasant surprise when my boots and pants were removed in much the same manner as my shirt had been. Christopher knelt over my knees and began to fondle me, starting with my balls (with an aware gentleness that—no offense to the few women who’ve allowed me to love them!—no woman has matched) and thighs. Soon he had a loose grip around the base of my cock and began to move it around in circles.
     All of this came at the expense of poor Sand’s balance, however, and she stood. A small part of my senses heard her walk away, but for the most part I heard only my own panting, thought only of the hand that was fondling my cock. He paused to lick his hands and look me in the eyes before his wet palms began to jack me off.
     There is something remarkable about being touched—one moment it may simply feel grand, a fierce massage. Yet the next, it is sublime. Fire runs through you and you are nowhere, no one. As I lay on my back in that forest I flickered into heaven—the only heaven I will allow to exist—and I was no one, an empty mind.
     He put his mouth over the head of my dick and I returned to my body, happy. He ran his teeth—so gently!—up and down the shaft while one hand stayed firm on the base. Suddenly, he looked up, released me, and stood.
     I turned and I saw his wife standing above me, so tall and beautiful and tauntingly naked, a length of cordage looped in her hand. Christopher strode over to her, stripping off his shirt, unbuttoning his pants.
     “Bring the mattress, will you?” he asked of me, and the two began to walk away, behind the tent.
     I grabbed the mattress and followed, watching their hips sway in time, hers bare and his still tauntingly clothed.
     Behind the tent I saw only silhouettes. Christopher took me quite bodily and pushed me against a tree as wide across as I am tall, kissed me hard. His beard was fuzzy and warm, his lips soft, but his tongue was relentless as it explored my mouth for that wonderful second. He overpowered me, held my arms back.
     Sand began to tie a knot around one of my wrists.
     “You can say no anytime you’d like,” Christopher whispered as he held me back.
     A hint of fear grew, but it only aroused me further. I said nothing.
     Sand walked around the trunk of the tree and tied the cord to my other hand. As soon as I was secured, Christopher released me and stripped off his pants. His dick, released, protruded in front of him—of admirable size, I confess, the perfect size to put into your mouth, but thicker than I’d want in my ass.
     Sand approached and placed her hands against the tree on either side of my head. She kissed me softly, and suddenly let out a gasp as Christopher entered her from behind.
     I nearly whimpered in desire as she moaned directly into my face. She put one hand on the back of my neck and gripped me hard for support.
     I could see his hand on her hip, driving them together. With each thrust she dug her nailless fingers deeper into my neck. Tied as I was, I could not put my hands on myself, yet it seemed my groin was screaming at me to do so.
     He groaned as he slammed into her, less gentle now as she was increasingly wet. She screamed once in the midst of her moaning, a high wail of pleasure not three inches away from my face.
     Suddenly he stopped and pulled out, and she collapsed against me, kissing me like a hungry woman.
     “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” she said into my ear, in between fierce bites to my neck and chin.
     The next moment she was a good six inches taller. In retrospect, I know that Christopher had placed the rolled-up mattress beneath her.
     She put her hands behind my back, supporting her weight with her hands. The ropes dug into my wrists. She raised one leg to the side, stood on her toes, positioned herself, dropped down onto the flats of her feet. To my surprise and delight, it worked. I slid into her.
     She couldn’t fuck me, not really. I bucked against her as well as I could from my position tied to the tree, and it felt sublime nonetheless, but soon she stood up once more and I was out of her.
     I must have whimpered. How could I not have?
     Christopher unrolled the mattress and she went onto all fours, her mouth near my thigh.
     He began to fuck her again, slower this time, from on his knees behind her. She reached up and grabbed my ass, supporting herself by holding me, fondling my dick with her mouth. She rocked to the rhythm of his thrusts, now screaming in earnest, her cries waking every creature imaginable.
     She scooted forward, sat up a bit more. I never realized, but sex with three people is remarkably complicated, physically speaking.
     He sat down on his heels, his knees out before him, and she sat back onto him. She put my dick in her mouth, grabbed the shaft and jacked me off while she fucked him.
     For one moment I saw a look in Christopher’s eyes, one of pure love for Sand. The way he held her hips while she rocked on him, the way he watched her back… a simple love.
     Then Sand switched hands on me, intentionally slobbering down the base of my cock, and I threw my head back. Fire coursed through my veins. I found myself fantasizing that it was me behind her, fucking her. Then I found myself in reality, and my dick was in her mouth, and her beautiful lover was fucking her, and I watched the muscles in his chest and I watched the look on his face, and I fantasized that I was fucking him.
     She pulled off of me to scream near-climatically, then was back to sucking me, and I moaned a final time, my hips shaking as I shot cum into her mouth. Her whole body was shaking—as was my own!—and she tightened her grip, pulling from base to tip, squeezing out the last of me.
     Afterwards, she spat discreetly and the two of them lay on the mattress, making love in a more traditional manner. I watched, enthralled, even as my erection shrank.
     Not long after, Christopher stood up and stepped towards me, shaking, his hand on his cock. He smiled, kissed me, and shot his load onto my belly.
     “Thank you,” he whispered into my ear, his voice wracked still with orgasm.

That night we ignored the tent and slept on bedrolls near our kitchen, counting on the woodsmoke to keep the bugs at bay. I lay on my back between them, each with their head curled onto my breast. I looked at the stars and fell asleep, dreaming of chaos.

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]]> http://www.steamypunk.net/chaos-theory/feed/ http://www.steamypunk.net/homecoming-part-one/ http://www.steamypunk.net/homecoming-part-one/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:00:12 +0000 Victor Chablon http://www.steamypunk.net/homecoming-part-one/ by Victor Chablon
She’s my tinkerer.
     I’ve called Lill that for the ten years I’ve known her. Oh, it’s a presumptuous thing to call her, particularly because she is most certainly not a tinkerer—she’s a master clocktocker and steamer.
     But it’s an especially presumptuous thing to call her, because she’s never been mine. Lill’s always been her own master, a tenacious controller of her destiny. Even after we married and our fiery wooing slid into a few well-worn patterns of domesticity, she was never anyone’s but her own. I loved her for that, for that untamable side of her. Lill, my wild woman with the goggles and the gloves. My tinkerer.
     We met in the borderlands, back when it was safe to be there, in a plankdive where the local beer was called “blear” (after a mug of the stuff, you’d understand), and the low-juiced ketenergy lights flickered like horizon lightning. That evening began with laughs, and it ended with us tangled and panting, licking and screwing like mad.
     Last week, I stood in the smoking crater that had been that tavern. The borderlands brought us together. The borderlands tore us apart.
     She was my tinkerer, and I was her doc, and when the war finally came back to the borders three years ago, I was pulled away from my life here, in this improbable warehouse in which we worked and lived. I wasn’t mending fractured arms for countryside farmers anymore. I wasn’t smearing my cooling salves on Lill’s smooth, pale skin—after all, nicks, bruises and burns are her constant occupational hazard. I took care of her. And oh, how my fiery, brilliant woman rewarded me for my tender care….
     But no. No farmhand splints. No Lill and the raucous music her machines made. Just war. War and blood. In my soul’s soul, I know it was Lill’s letters that kept me sane, and safe.
     The war is over, for now. Today, the zeppelins carried us from the front lines to our towns. After all the fighting, the victory was sudden; I couldn’t even write to Lill before they put us on the airships. The generals had decided their warriors deserved a speedy return. They reckoned three years away from family was far too long. They reckoned right. But today’s walk from Sota’s airstrip to the countryside felt longer than the years that had passed.
     And now, here I am, standing before the tall doors of our improbable home. I’m dust-covered and trembling. I haven’t seen her, haven’t spoken to her, haven’t touched her in three years. I place my grit-crusted hands on the door handles, wrap my fingers around their carved metal.
     My greatest fear is that she won’t want the man I’ve become. The man who’s seen such terrible things.
     I pull open the doors, and the afternoon light rushes into the cavernous interior. My god, so much is the same—the enclosed quarters near the entrance (the meals we made in its kitchen, the passion we’d made in its bedroom), the wide space of Lill’s workshop, the enclosed bathroom off to the side (and what a grinning arsepain that had been, walking from bathroom to quarters, traversing her gear and contraptions and grease-covered tools). But the differences were here, too, impossible to ignore—Lill’s inventions were larger and noisier than ever. Blocky machinery, as tall and wide as four men, throbbed and hissed. Ah, and in the air, the coppery scent of spent ketenergy.
     I smiled. From clocktocking to keteneration. That’s my girl.
     And there she was: my tinkerer, my Lill, her back to the door, a wrench the size of a chairleg in her gloved hands, tugging at a troublesome bolt on the machine. The afternoon light swept across her. She started.
     She turned slowly, and even from where I stood thirty feet away, I could see every nuance of her form. She was leaner than I’d last seen her. Even beneath the grease-stained overalls and ragged undershirt, I sensed the flatness of her belly, the lilt of her perky breasts, the sensuous curves of her hips. The muscles in her arms were taut from her work. Her neck glistened with sweat. Her face and arms were covered in soot and mechanic’s grease, as they’d always been.
     Ah, this was new. Her hair was magenta. My grin grew into bona-fide smile. I must’ve looked like a vagabond madman.
     Sunlight glinted from the goggle lenses on her face. Her brown eyebrows perked up, inquisitive. The wrench clanged to the floor.
     We met in the middle, tinkerer and doc, and clutched at each other, wordless, disbelieving, our dirty hands rushing across each others’ body. Is this real, I wondered, is this real, is this real, my god, is this real.
     I will not tell you what was said there, the words that echoed in our sunlit cathedral. There were questions, and tentative answers, and tears, and disbelieving laughter. We didn’t talk about my war, or her new inventions. But as we finally pulled ourselves away from each other, the silence of three years took hold. Her green eyes looked up into mine. I gazed at her. Shuddering, I told her my greatest fear.
     A smile emerged on her lips. She pulled off her gloves and goggles, tossed them recklessly to the floor. She tugged off my dusty satchel, and unbuttoned my overcoat. Those, too, fell to the stained stone.
     ”We’re not going to be afraid now,” she said. “We’re going to wash this all away. Get reacquainted. Come with me.”
     Her hand tugged at mine, and we walked across the workshop, toward the bathroom.

I adore this woman. I had thought the running water and warmer she’d built for the tub in this small room had been more than adequate for our needs. But Lill has never been content with adequate. In the years I’d been gone, her mind had concocted modifications and improvements. The warmer was now half the size of than the one I remembered, and strange vertical piping sprung from one end of the tub, taller than either of us. A nozzle-shaped thing perched on the pipes’ ends—it reminded me of a overturned colander.
     ”You’re going to love this,” Lill said. She adjusted a knob on the crate-sized warmer, squinting at its brass-encircled gauges. Needles ticked and twitched. Lill looked over her shoulder at me. The rogue oil-smear beneath her left eye hopped merrily as she gave me a wink. She wrapped her fingers around the warmer’s metal lever and pulled it downward.
     The machine groaned, and the piping on the tub trembled. Water streamed from the nozzle-thing. Steam quickly surrounded us. Lill stood, and reached out and touched my chin. She pulled it away from the new contraption—I admit, I was a bit mesmerized by the sight of this new thing—and back toward her face. My eyes followed. She winked again, and unsnapped the buttons on her overalls. The straps slid from her shoulders. The tough fabric fell off her body.
     ”I call it a ‘thunderstorm,’” Lill said, nodding toward the water. I was barely listening. I was watching her. She stepped out of the clothing bundled at her feet. My eyes drank up the sight of her, from the floor up: her painted toes—something she’d always called “an impractical indulgence”—the matching tattoos on her pale calves, her slender thighs, the gray panties covering her sex. I spotted a rogue pubic hair curling against her thigh, and exhaled. It had been so long. Goddamn, so very long.
     I felt my cock swelling. It pressed against my pants, wanting. I let my eyes go further up, past the waistline of her panties, up to the ragged, thin fabric of her tight undershirt. Emblazoned on its chest was the worn logo of the local clocktocker’s guild she’d created five years ago. Her breasts were perfectly shaped, and pressed against the sheer cloth. I could see the outline of her stiffening nipples, spotted the dark outlines of the tattoos on her chest. My cock pressed harder now against my pants. My hands slid to my belt, completely on their own.
     I didn’t stop them.
     My eyes continued their ascent to Lill’s slender face, to her lips—a small moan escaped me as she licked them knowingly—up to her soot-stained cheeks and nose, into her eyes. I’d once told this woman her eyes were oceans. I’d been wrong. I gazed into them, twin emerald planets, completely lost in their newness.
     My fingers tugged at the leather at my waist, and as my tinkerer watched me, her head lowered slightly, gazing at me with a hunger I’d never seen before. I heard my belt buckle’s clink of metal against metal. Lill pulled the undershirt off her body. She grinned as my trousers finally slid from my hips. I stood there, self-concious of my stiffening prick and the bulge in my underpants.
     ”Take off your shirt,” she said. She glanced down, past her beautiful tattooed breasts, to her panties. “I’ll take care of these.”
     I fumbled at the buttons on my shirt, intoxicated by her. Lill leaned forward to pull the panties from her hips. She stopped halfway, her back in a semi-arch. She reached out and pressed her hands against my chest. Electric. Her fingers slid toward the center, between my pectorals. She ripped the cloth apart, buttons cascading to the floor. I moaned. She placed her hands on her hips, her back still in that half-arch … and as she pulled the fabric down her thighs, her lips and tongue slid down my chest, kissing and licking and nipping at my flesh. I shuddered.
     Finally, her panties were down past her knees, and her mouth was kissing my underwear fabric, pulled taut by my cock. Her hands free again, she tugged down my underwear.
     She said nothing. The seconds were hours now.
     Lill slowly slid her mouth around my prick. I gasped as her lips slid further and further down my shaft, soaking it with saliva, her tongue sliding against its underside, until her nose was buried in my pubic hair and her lips were sucking at its base. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils as she sucked my entire length.
     Three years is a long time. It was exquisite.
     She slowly pulled away from my now-glistening cock (when my swollen head emerged from her lips, there was a quiet, nearly-whimsical pop), and pulled herself tall again. She gently grabbed my wrist and guided my hand between her breasts, down past her navel, to between her thighs. My fingers curved around her body, my fingers seeking her slit. Goddamn, she was so very wet.
     Lill gave a husky chuckle and pulled my hand away. She shot a glance at the spraying water, at her thunderstorm. “We’re already wet,” she said. “Let’s play in the rain.”
     We stepped inside the tub, and was I tickled by the fingers of water hitting my dirty skin. The sensation was amazing, new—but it was secondary to Lill’s body before me. Our hands slid over each other, marveling at the togetherness we were experiencing. Her eyes and fingers asked questions at the new scars on my chest, my arms, my back. As she stood before me, her back facing me, her ass pressing against my cock, my hands soaped and slipped down the canvas of her back. I took in the new art she’d had inked between her shoulder blades—a long, thick clocktocker’s wrench. It aligned perfectly with her spine, lanced down to the middle of her back.
     I washed the sweat from her skin, the block of soap gliding down her arms, down her spine, my hands reaching around her body to lather her breasts, the soap clipping against her stiff nipples. She was sighing now, pressing her backside harder against my cock. I leaned my head forward, tongue extended, now licking the back of her neck. Lill’s body stiffened, and now her back was against my chest, and her fingers encircled my wrists once more. She brought one hand up to her left breast … and the other, down to her pussy again. The soap clanked against the basin, forgotten. As I pinched her flesh and sucked at her neck, my fingers slid between her pussy lips and pressed and rubbed her slick, stiff clit.
     Lill was groaning now, her arms extending upward, hands tangled in my wet hair, pressing my face against her neck. I kissed and sucked and licked, and my hands found the rhythm at which her body was grinding. Three years without her, and yet here I was, with her, knowing these places on her body, never forgetting, greedily sucking and now fucking her with my fingers.
     Her fingernails pulled at my hair, her moans louder now, louder still. One hand was away from my head now, now between her ass and my belly, fingers wrapping around my quivering cock. I was finger-fucking her and she was pumping me and the steam was enshrouding us, our noises bouncing off the tiled walls, and…
     … I pulled away. Lill turned around to face me, her green eyes glazed—and a little pouty.
     ”Why?” she asked. Her hands were sliding down my belly as she said this, wanting to touch me again.
     I grinned slyly. “We have to finish washing this stuff off you—and me,” I said. We looked at each other’s. There was still some spots of mechanic-funk on her skin, and much of my chest still needed washing. Our hands had been craving something other than cleanliness. “And then we’ll feast.”
     I squatted down in the streaming water, and picked up the block of soap that had landed between Lill’s feet. But as I went to stand, Lill’s hands slipped onto my shoulders and pressed downward, keeping me there.
     I glanced up. Her face looked down at me, her smile ravenous now.
     ”Feast now,” she said.
     That’s my tinkerer. Never satisfied with adequate.
     My eyes slid past her lips, past her breasts, past her navel, to my eye-level. Just above her thatch of pubic hair was her favorite tattoo: an image of a single clockwork gear, perfectly rendered and shaded. This one, I had done myself.
     My tongue quickly found her clit, and I licked and lapped and sucked. Lill cried out, clutching at my head and hair.
     But our re-aquaintence was just beginning.

Lill did not come as I’d licked her, but she had hissed my name over and over, teeth clenched, her fingers pinching and pulling at her nipples, her knees leaning into my shoulders, the inked gear above my nose fluttering as she gasped. Finally, in a voice both ragged and reluctant, she told me to stop—she simply couldn’t stand on her feet any more. I pulled my fingers from her pussy (so tight and throbbing around my middle and index fingers, so wet, so close), and I stood. My eyes were lost in hers, again.
     She trembled, wanting more, knowing release wouldn’t come here, and yet she she brought her wet body toward mine, her fingernails sliding down my scarred back as she kissed me. Her belly pressed against my hard cock. Her tongue swirled around mine, intoxicating and sweet and not at all gentle, no—we were too far gone for anything tentative now. My arms encircled her; I was on fire for her, I was fearless. She gyrated, gasping, her lower belly grinding against my prick.
     I moaned, and found myself pressing my cock forward, between us, to the rhythm of her body. I felt its sensitive flesh tugged taut, then slack, over and over—Lill was jacking me off with her body, with our bodies. I felt a hand’s worth of fingernails leave my back. I noted the absence, fleetingly….
     …and then Lill was sucking my bottom lip, biting it, and her hand now cradled my balls, squeezing them to the timing of our thrusts.
     The sound that came from my lips was not that of a man’s. It was primal, a snarl. My own fingernails dug into Lill’s shoulder blades. They carved scratches down her clocktocker’s wrench, past more ink on her lower back, finally gripping her ass. I pressed her closer to me. I wanted. God, I wanted. My mind devolved. Want.
     She bit my lip again. I thrusted. Want.
     She massaged my scrotum, smirking. I thrusted.
     Want.
     She pulled away, leaving me rattled and craving her. She stepped out of the tub. I gasped as the thunderstorm sprayed fully onto me, onto my throbbing cock. She pulled the warmer’s metal lever upward, and the rainstorm ended. We stood there, panting, our eyes locked. She did not reach for the towels hanging from the hooks by the door. No.
     Lill smiled, and ran.
     My bare feet squeaked against the tub’s surface as I bolted after her, laughing. Perhaps a man more concerned with discretion would have felt awkward dashing through that doorway, into a grease-stained warehouse, naked, dripping, steel-veined cock bouncing with each footfall. I wasn’t that man three years ago. I wasn’t that man now.
     My tinkerer is strong and lean and ferocious, but my legs are longer than hers, and I snatched her arm at the heart of this enormous room, at the place where Lill created her metal miracles. I whirled her around to face me. Her smile was brilliant, her face glowed amber in the waning afternoon light. I tugged a rogue slice of wet hair from her pale cheek. I brought my lips to hers. She wrapped her arms around my neck.
     I slid my hands down to her legs and scooped them upward, off the floor. Lill chuckled against my lips and slid her legs up my thighs, locking her feet behind my back. We stood there, kissing.
     And then I strode forward, finally placing her ass on the worktable behind her. My Want, three year’s worth, slid inside her.
     We gasped together. It began.
     ~ End of Part One ~

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]]> http://www.steamypunk.net/homecoming-part-one/feed/ http://www.steamypunk.net/emerson-and-adalia/ http://www.steamypunk.net/emerson-and-adalia/#comments Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:44:49 +0000 Dimitri Markotin http://www.steamypunk.net/emerson-and-adalia/ by Dimitri Markotin
It was obvious to Emerson—and likely most every guest of the garden party—that the raven-haired beauty bore no invitation. Certainly, she was well corseted, bustled, and dressed; her gown swept the stone pathways, its neckline revealed gorgeous collarbones. But her hair was not done up and came only to her bare shoulders. She wore no hat and her skin was tanned to olive. She was not society.
     Yet her demure smile defeated Emerson at a glance. So taken with her was he that he immediately sought her arm and walked her through the aisles of rose and hedge to the fountain and the dancing. Assuming his lower-class companion to be something of a lark, the society eyes turned quickly away. Of more interest to them was the remarkable airship that floated above their heads and fed their aristocratic jealousy. The finest, the newest. The fastest, and of course, the most expensive.
     The stranger could dance, Emerson realized, though she barely spoke a word. So dance they did, and always, under his arms, he felt she was waiting to break free of the rigid waltzes and minuets. They stepped in time, his hand pleasantly on the small of her back, her brown eyes gazing up at him with wonderment.
     Dusk became night and many couples—married or no—filtered away to explore the grounds of his father’s manor, away from the gaslight braziers that lit the party proper.
     “Would like you like to come with me, down to the river?” he asked as they continued to dance.
     She shook her head, casting her loose hair about in way that was both unladylike and remarkably attractive.
     “Then perhaps you’d like to see the Journey Apostle? It’s my father’s ship, and I can take us aboard.”
     His dance partner stared penetratingly at his face for several moments before she replied with a smile. “Yes, I would like that.”

That night found Emerson naked in his four-poster bed, alone with his thoughts in the bright glow of mantled gas lamps. Adalia—her name as she had told him—had shyly bid him good evening and walked alone through the gate, where he was certain no carriage waited. She had promised to see him again, but he doubted her.
     His hand was around his cock, his thumb applying pressure to the base of the top. Adalia. A shy city girl, he told himself, a quiet young woman who dreamed of a finer lot in life. Her mother may have been a lady’s maid, he conjectured, to have known what dresses to wear.
     He massaged the muscles of his groin with one hand while the other moved slowly around the tip of his dick. She had wanted to go to bed with him, but had been too shy.
     He lazily fantasized about his lowborn dance partner, dreaming of how he could escape his dull life of privilege and she her menial labor. Perhaps she was a washwoman. They would steal the Journey and escape to the stars. They would make love under the moonlight on the deck of the fabulous ship while the crew slumbered below.
     Yes, she would moan, be on top of me. Hold me down—
     His fantasies were interrupted by a glint of light outside the window. He turned and saw a figure silhouetted in the moonlight. Emerson thought to yell frightfully until the figure’s face moved closer to the glass, where it was illuminated by the gaslight. It was Adalia, in black pants and blouse, suspended by a rope.
     She moved a finger to her full lips, signaling him to stay silent. And then she smiled, a coy smile.
     Emerson lay on his back, his head turned to the near stranger outside his third story window, his hands pleasing himself.
     His fantasy lay shattered, but there was Adalia, and he stroked himself with a new fervor. Thoughts left him entirely; only his hands and the vision of her smiling face occupied his mind. She was staring intently, alternating between his masturbation and the pleading look he bore on his face.
     He saw her lick her lips and he spasmed, but did not come.
     She made a sign with her hands that he did not comprehend and then began to climb the rope, out of his sight. A moment later the rope itself snaked up past his window, and he lay sweating in the warm summer night, his mind swimming.
     As a precautionary measure, he opened his window.

He was roused not fifteen minutes later by a firm knock at the door.
     “Who disturbs me?” He asked coyly, hoping for Adalia.
     “It’s Charles, m’lord.” An older servant of the household spoke through the closed door. “I’m just up to warn you; there’s been a guard who says he’s seen someone come over the wall. Now, I’m certain it’s nothing, and I’m certain it’s handled, but I just thought it proper to tell you.”
     “Thank you,” Emerson said, irritated. “I’ll be on my guard.”
     “Excellent, sir. Sorry to disturb your rest, sir.”
     Adrenaline seeped unnoticed into Emerson’s veins as he sat up in bed, pondering the night. Adalia was en route to steal the Journey Apostle, he was convinced. He banished thoughts of his father’s wrath from his mind and gathered the courage to join her at its mooring. All at once he stood and walked towards the magnificent wooden dresser to gather his hunting garb.
     But no sooner was he out of his bed when Adalia came diving through the window, hitting the floor with a thump and an acrobatic roll, a knapsack cradled in her arms.
     Mindless of his nudity, he rushed over to help her stand.
     She shrugged away his hand as a nuisance and deftly regained her feet. The clueless villager he had taken her to be was gone forever, and Adalia stood before Emerson with a fierce confidence and a wild glint in her eyes.
     “I told you I was coming back,” she said, stepping towards him and looking up to meet his eyes. “Do you have music?”
     “I’m sorry?”
     “A symphonion? A kalliope? A celesta?” Adalia looked around his crowded room at a strangely frantic clip, dropping the canvas knapsack onto the wooden floor. She opened drawers with abandon, shut them with a fervor.
     “I’ve a roller organ, if that’s what you ask.” Emerson walked to a small wooden box on his dresser and opened it, revealing the latest in self-playing music machines.
     “Put it on, then, put it on. I’d have music!” Adalia grew excited and continued to pace. “You folk have the finest!”
     She acted so much like a wild animal, Emerson thought, that he was reminded of his trip to Africa. He selected a cylinder of Diederick Meer, the mad German, and the roller organ began to play.
     A hand came from behind and caressed his bare hip. He turned, and Adalia stood on her toes to kiss him. Her breath tasted lightly of wine and of something more mineral—of rust—but he was enchanted.
     She led him to the bed, firmly but not roughly, and pushed him onto it. Once he was seated, she kissed him again, taking his neck in her hands. Her fingers were rough against his growing stubble, and it came as a bit of a shock to realize that her hands would have no reason to be as soft as his own.
     “Lie back,” she commanded gently.
     He did as he was told, and she straddled his waist fully clothed. She leaned down to kiss him again. He opened his mouth and lightly licked her teeth. At this, she kissed him harder, her hands cradled behind his head, holding it above the goosedown pillow. Never had he felt such passion, never had a kiss driven adrenaline into his veins.
     “Why did you come here, if not to steal the Journey?” Emerson asked when she sat back on her knees and began to knead his chest. She took no break from touching him, exploring him. She hadn’t been still for a second since she had landed in his room.
     “I came here for you, sir prince.”
     “Bollocks. You didn’t come here for me, and I’m no prince.”
     She was reaching behind herself so that her hands ran along the outside of his upper thighs, gently stroking him with fingernails while the music box played its quiet, incessant tune. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re handsome. I’ll wager you know that, I’ll wager you’re told all the time. Yet I’ve thought about this since you took my arm.”
     ‘You’ve robbed my father, haven’t you?” His tone was more curious than accusatory.
     “And who hasn’t your father robbed? A coal baron isn’t rich of their own sweat, never was.” Her hands moved onto his cock, running one fingernail down lightly from tip to base.
     “Don’t get me wrong,” Emerson managed between sighs, “I’m glad you’re here.”
     Adalia leaned forward and kissed him again on the mouth, her full lips luscious against his own, and Emerson dropped any objections he might have had.
     She stood playfully on the bed, ducking her head below the hand-painted tester and striding a quick lap around him. She reached his feet and went back to her knees, laughing.
     “Quiet, or you’ll be caught!” Emerson whispered.
     “I’ll be no such thing.” Adalia ran her palms up Emerson’s shins, over his knees, up his thighs. Her upper body trailed shortly behind, and soon she reached his cock, poising her mouth above it.
     She seemed about to take it in her mouth, when she looked up to meet him in the eyes. “You want this?”
     “Yes.”
     Adalia ran her tongue up the underside of his cock and he felt still more blood rush to fill it. Her tongue reached his urethra and played with it—sending fire through his loins—before she pursed her lips, opened her mouth, and began to suck his dick.
     She bobbed her head almost playfully for a short moment, then paused to lick her hands and jerk him off slowly.
     Emerson stretched, his hands grasping at the headboard, his mind a scattered mix: frightened of discovery, frightened of Adalia, and enticed and pleasured beyond all reason.
     He began to move towards climax, unconsciously thrusting his hips, and she let off and rose to her knees. With both hands she unbuttoned first her lace-less blouse and then her plain, utilitarian chemise.
     Emerson rose up in bed, and sat cross-legged in front of her, his hands reaching out to touch her breasts. They hung slightly low, unaccustomed to daily corseting, and her nipples were large and dark.
     “Kiss them,” she said, and he did, one after the other, savoring the feel of their softness against his lips
     “Bite one gently,” she said, and he did, feeling the nipple grow hard as he released his teeth.
     He eased her onto her back, and she lay down with her legs together. When he tried to place his own legs inside hers, she resisted.
     “No?” he asked, surprised.
     “No,” she said. “I’ll undress, and you can look—I want you to look—but you won’t touch me. Don’t ask me why.”
     Emerson nodded, acting as nonplussed as he was able. Certainly, there were greater mysteries to the night than this new one.
     She reached down and unbuttoned her pants at the front, sliding them down over her quite generous hips. Such an hourglass figure she had, even uncorseted. Emerson rose to his knees and stared at the curve of her body. Unconsciously, one hand went to his groin and he touched himself.
     He watched as she rolled over slowly, showing her body to him. He stroked himself, longing to touch her.
     Adalia sighed pleasure at the sight of his arousal and opened her legs, revealing a beautiful, large-lipped cunt. The smell made Emerson ache to be inside her, to reach behind her and take her ass in his hands while he fucked her, and he jerked himself still faster.
     Adalia began to rub her cunt, opening it voyeuristically and arching her back, putting her weight on her feet and shoulders. He heard her moan softly, her eyes closed, and Emerson was floating somewhere, lost in her beautiful form.
     Not touching, they both began to quiver slightly, both finding a strange rhythm, Emerson sliding his saliva-wet hand up and down his shaft while Adalia spread her lips open and rubbed her clit.
     “Straddle my waist,” she said, and Emerson did, still kneeling.
     Adalia licked her hands and took over for him, quite clearly delighting in his pleasure. She rubbed spit on the skin between her breasts and brought his dick down between them. She pressed her tits around his cock and put a hand on top of his dick, guiding it. He fucked her chest and she propped her head up on a pillow. He closed his eyes in pleasure. So easy it was to imagine he was inside her.
     He felt her tongue opened his eyes. He saw the head of his dick in her mouth, and he quivered and jerked. Suddenly her other hand was on his ass, pulling him further forward. Her finger, wet with spit, pressed hard against his asshole, sending electricity all through his body.
     “I’m going to come,” he said, panting, driving hard through her breasts and into her mouth.
     She pushed harder on his ass and her finger slid in halfway to the first knuckle. His whole body shook violently, and he came into her mouth, his mouth a silent scream of pleasure. After a another tremor went through him he collapsed onto her, spent and happy.
     After a moment, she forced her way out from underneath him with remarkable strength. She looked at him, smiled, and spit his cum onto his remarkably expensive bedsheets.
     The roller organ still played, the same five-minute tune.

An hour later, she was still in his bed, wearing only her black canvas pants. He was curled up naked against her, running his fingers through her now-tangled hair.
     She was staring towards the window at the first hint of morning light. “You know high society, through and through.”
     “Of course.”
     “Help me then. You can get me invited to the finest manors.”
     “For half the money?”
     “I don’t keep the money,” Adalia’s spoke as though her mind were far away, wandering the woods of a distant land, “it goes to the poor.”
     “If I help you, will I then be able to touch you?”
     Adalia looked at Emerson quite seriously. “No.”
     Emerson didn’t hesitate: “I’ll do it anyhow.”
     Adalia absentmindedly ran a finger down Emerson’s neck. “Thank you.”
     A long moment transpired, as Emerson pondered the new life ahead of him, before Adalia spoke again: “For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never done this. I’m not using you,” she seemed to be struggling to find the proper words. “I did what I did because I wanted you, prince.”
     Dawn peeked through the window, and Emerson watched as Adalia stood and dressed herself. He meekly met her eyes when she kissed him farewell, and he said nothing as she hefted his family’s fortune in jewels onto her back and climbed out the window.

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]]> http://www.steamypunk.net/emerson-and-adalia/feed/ http://www.steamypunk.net/a-pirate-of-both-day-night/ http://www.steamypunk.net/a-pirate-of-both-day-night/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:23:44 +0000 Margaret Killjoy http://www.steamypunk.net/a-pirate-of-both-day-night/ by Margaret Killjoy
I can’t sleep with you, you know that.” Ulian ran a few fingers up Neh-te’s collarbones as he spoke. Her striped sailor’s shirt, already wide-collared, was stretched open to expose her deeply tanned shoulders.
     “I know,” Neh-te whispered mournfully, “I remember.”
     The bamboo dock beneath them creaked slowly as the waves of low tide splashed against its posts. Behind them, on the mainland, a bamboo windmill beat the time slowly, churning in the ocean-side winds.
     Soon enough the morning would come, and Neh-te would be back on her steam-rowed boat. Ulian would return to his wife, to whom he had promised near-fidelity, and the would-be lovers might not meet for another moon at the very least.
     “So,” Neh-te said as she took a hold of his hand and placed it at the top of her high-waisted pants, below her generous ribcage. She undid the two parallel rows of buttons and folded the top down to expose her slight, soft belly. “You can’t sleep with me. But what can you do?”
     Ulian stepped in closer and pressed his mouth to her neck, hard. Ulian smiled, lifted her well-defined chin, and placed her hand on the small man’s back.

The next day, Neh-te was perched on the deck of her ship, gazing lazily towards the land. In still air, the Fiercest Gull could outrun, and overpower, any merchant vessel that ran the routes from Angeline to its outlying towns. The Gull’s sixty oars were fueled by the boiler in the aft of her belly, which fed on the combustible soil of The Great Waste. The Great Waste, of course, was far, far inland, and the train lines ran infrequently, so Neh-te was captain of one of only a handful of steam-rowers in the Ocean. Captain and sole sailor, as a matter of fact; the ship was completely automated.
     Most days, Neh-te docked to a floating platform, living peaceably amongst her fellows Of The Sea. But when the clouds were gone and the wind was dead, she drifted just out of sight of Angeline and struck at any wind-vessel unlucky enough to come into the view of her spyglass. It was a good life, and often a lazy one.
     She had slept a few hours in her hammock, and from morning till midday she relaxed nude on the deck, her war clothes close at hand. She let the sun massage her as she stretched slowly, meditatively. After a bite of fresh fruit—a rare spoil of war—she did slow push-ups, enjoying the feel of her muscles at work.
     No ships were on the horizon, and the Gull’s engine was idle. Neh-te loved the serenity of solitude, with only her ship, the sun, and ocean for company. From time to time a school of flying fish would skim across the surface of the water. She sat with one leg out and reached forward to grab her toes. While her muscles stretched, one of her small breasts grazed against her thigh, and she smiled. She slowly began to massage her foot, her ankle, her shin.
     When her hand reached her thigh, Neh-te began to work her thumbs in slow circles towards her crotch. She lay on her back and brought her left hand to her mouth, casually brushing the backs of her fingers along her belly and across her breasts. With her right hand, she massaged the edge of her brown-haired pubic thatch, running her thumb from the base of her hipbone to the outer lips of her cunt, but she went no further.
     She was only teasing herself, Neh-te knew. She stood up slowly and surveyed the horizon. Far away, she saw a few porpoises, but no sails. Grinning still, she walked across the deck into her cabin.
     The Fiercest Gull was built of thick bamboo timbers, but her hull was reinforced by old steel, stained and painted to keep reflections to a minimum. Thirty meters long, there were fore and aft porches, but the middle was enclosed; there was no need for a mast, and indeed, one would give her presence away quite readily, poking out above the horizon.
     The upper deck contained her living space—with its bare wooden desk, hammock and larder—as well as storage for the bounty of the sea; trade goods from Angeline that kept her ship fueled and filled the bellies of many Of The Sea. The deck below held thirty pair of oars and the steam-heart of her beloved Gull.
     Neh-te walked into her cabin, her gait as gay and light as her mood, and opened the icebox. Removing a bit of smoked eel, she strolled back out into the sun to eat. She put the spyglass to her eye while she stood, calmly munching, and this time she spotted a sail, sagging in the dead winds of the day.
     The brass spyglass went back to its place in the deck-chest, and Neh-te pulled on her war clothes: a jerkin of thick leather, steel gauntlets and a short, armored leather skirt. Each had quick release straps in case she went overboard, and truth be told much of her lay unprotected, but she didn’t fret overmuch. She bore a bandolier with three brace of powder pistols, a saber at her side and a hatchet at the small of her back. She doubted the merchants would give a fight. In fact, she hadn’t drawn a pistol or a blade in conflict on the sea for four years now; her infamy kept her victims from resisting. Infamy and a terrifying array of automatic ballistae, torch-guns, and cannon, of course.
     She brought the engine to life with the levers set into the deck, and the ship rumbled beneath her feet.

The merchant ship had spotted her, for they added sail in quite a rush, but it brought them no benefit in the still air. Soon, the Fiercest Gull drew alongside.
     “A fine afternoon, are we agreed?” Neh-te stood with one foot on the rail of her ship, hailing the merchants with a practiced nonchalance.
     The merchant’s ship was two-masted schooner, and though it was half again the size of the Gull, it was clearly unequipped for battle.
     “Neh-te, I hoped I’d never meet you.” The captain of the schooner was standing on the deck, clearly un-armed, a portly fellow in his early forties. He wore the uniform of a civilian captain out of Angeline; a leather vest dyed red, a tri-corner black leather cap and un-dyed buckskin pants. He looked a bit pasty; he most likely commanded his ship from the generously sized cabin and rarely took much sun. The servants did most of the work, in Angeline.
     “Well, I’m sorry to break your string of luck, but I’ll be overseeing the transfer of your cargo to my ship. And you will stay inside your cabin; your crew shall assist me.”
     “We carry supplies and medicine for Sanosia, you know that, don’t you? You say you’re some big hero, but you are a scoundrel.”
     “Any town that bends a knee to Angeline, that supplies its vast cruelty with food, is deserving of any hardship it may endure. Now, you will be to your cabin, where you shall remain. If I see you again I shall shoot you dead. If any of your