Chương 128: Chapter 121

Cale I sat with that for a moment. A date. It was a strange thing to think about. Not the concept exactly, because I understood what Ellara meant once she explained it. Two people, a place, an agreed time, the mutual acknowledgment of interest. Simple enough. What was strange was that it had never once occurred to me to do it. In the Wastes you did not date or court, which was something I had heard of. You did not do any of those things. You survived, you operated, you moved.

The women I had encountered out there were either contractors, targets, or people I was protecting, and none of those categories left room for the kind of attention Ellara was describing. It was not that I had no interest in the fair sex. I did. I am as hot-blooded as the next guy. I simply never got around to it. My first kiss was actually a lady of the night at a brothel in the Eastern Bloc near their capital when I was trying to save three teenage girls.

That experience had made me, the Ghost of the Wastes, weak in the knees. I would never admit that out loud. So yes. I know I am into girls. So why had I never gone that direction? Bottom line. There was always another contract, another plane, another thing that required handling before anything personal could be considered, and it kept getting pushed to a theoretical future that never quite arrived. Not that I had never been propositioned. That was weirder than the concept of dating.

Chieftess Threnna of the Omazan Warrior Clan had offered herself, her daughters, and the right to call Kordar home. The Omazan were a matriarchal warrior people, women who built their world without men in it and kept it that way by preference and capability. They needed men to procreate but for some reason only had daughters, daughters that had a strong affinity for Aura and fiery dispositions.

Men passed through Kordar, apparently something about the Nexus brought them there randomly even when travel consistently hit the gate systems near the major mana population centers. When that happened, occasionally a man was invited to stay, a Seed-Caller, welcomed for about a month where he engaged in amorous activity trying to get as many women of age as possible. I had been told by other mercenaries it was quite the experience.

After the period when the contribution was complete they were released, apparently with a very big smile on their face. Whatever that meant. Chieftess Threnna offered me something different. She wanted me to be her Hearthbound. This was the one time a man was given equal standing, a name within the tribe, the right to remain. It happened perhaps once in a generation, when the Chieftess herself extended the offer. It was the highest honor the Omazan gave to anyone. Well, any man.

Apparently it was a collective marriage arrangement. I did not ask what that meant. I could not exactly blame them for it. About a year ago I had been given the offer after I saved most of their society from a group of zealots called the Ignis Formal Fellowship and mercenary group that was bad news and worked opposite of the Dusk Assembly, the Red Ledger. They had been intending to sell most of the women into slavery. I did not react well to that kind of thing, so I made an example out of them.

Afterward, Chieftess Threnna wanted me to be her Hearthbound. Every woman in that valley had wanted me to say yes. They were very vocal about it. I had turned them down. I did not want them using their bodies to repay something that should have been a given. I left in a hurry after that. That was not my only experience along those lines, but it was probably the most direct and dramatic. The Chieftess had wanted to take her and a bunch of the daughters too.

On the tamer side, Princess Talena had proposed marriage at Virex Caelum and then tried to have me detained, which was an approach I still could not fully categorize. And then there was Thessaly, who had been at Kordar with the Dusk Assembly and had proposed marriage right after the Chieftess, and who had been proposing at regular intervals for approximately a year since, whose definition of relentless would have impressed a siege engine. None of that was what Ellara was describing.

Her version was where you asked a person if they wanted to spend an afternoon with you. They said yes or no, and then you did it, and no one got detained. No one proposed anything binding. No one threatened to destroy your organization if you did not comply. It was the ordinary version that ordinary people apparently did without thinking about it. I had not been ordinary for a very long time and did not know if I had any right to that sort of normalcy. Who would want to date the Ghost of the Wastes?

That seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it I packed up my things and left the study hall. The afternoon had settled into the kind of warm that the island did well, the light coming sideways off the water and catching the stone of the main arcade, making the whole campus look more permanent than it probably was. Though I supposed that was awfully philosophical for a late afternoon in the middle of the week.

I took the eastern path back toward the residential quarter, the one that ran along the lower colonnade and past the exterior seating where students gathered after the midday session. I was halfway down it when the quality of attention shifted. Not from me, which made sense since I was no one in particular. From the seating area to my left. They had arranged themselves like people who had been waiting a while, settled in without making it obvious. Seven in total.

Two broad-shouldered boys at the edges, combat track by their build and bearing. They had agreed to be here and were fine with the assignment. Two girls on the bench with their interfaces out, relaxed. Another boy standing slightly back, carrying a bag that was not his and not appearing to notice. The sixth wore pale grey Church household attire, the kind that announced institutional affiliation without naming the specific institution.

He was a direct-line boy by the bearing, old faith, old money, the type raised to understand that proximity to power had its own potential. He was leaning forward with both elbows on his knees and his full attention on the center of the group with an intensity that suggested he had been here longer than the others and had strong feelings about it. The seventh was harder to read until I caught the house detail.

Valmor emblem, subtle, a trim and a clasp worked into his jacket, the kind of detail that said old habit rather than display. He was standing slightly apart from the rest with his arms crossed, wearing a decision he privately regretted and had too much dignity to take back. Not quite sulking. Something more complicated than sulking. Kaereth Valmor's cousin, or something similar. I had no specific intelligence on that. I had the expression, which was familiar enough.

And at the center of all of it, leaning against the column at the corner of the arcade with her arms crossed and her weight on one hip, was the most striking woman I had seen since the Gala. Fiery red hair, falling past her shoulders in a wave that looked styled without any of the effort. She had come from training and had not changed, or had not seen any reason to. A deep green sports bra and shorts that left no question about the rest of her.

Strong-featured, pale-skinned, the copper-red and the green eyes and the broad-shouldered build producing something that did not fit neatly into any category I had a name for and was considerably more interesting for it. She was a senior. I could tell by her ID badge clipped to her sports bra. The rest of the seating area had noticed her group was waiting for something. When I came out of the colonnade they found out what.

She pushed off the column and crossed the path to meet me, unhurried, the group staying exactly where it was behind her. I had the distinct impression she had known exactly how long it would take me to come out that door.

"Cale Arcanus," she said. Her voice carried a strong Northern Bloc accent, refined and educated but with a laziness to it that made it something else entirely. It was a beautiful accent.

"Yes," I said.

"That is me."

"Siobhan Morrigan." She held herself easily. She had never needed composure; every room had always been comfortable with her in it.

"Capstone year. I know Princess Talena through our families' arrangement with the Aurion court." A smile, brief and comfortable.

"I saw the Crucible session. And the Petra footage. I find you interesting and attractive." Green eyes, direct, a shade that sat between forest and sea and did not apologize for either.

"I have come to give you the privilege of taking me to dinner and then dancing. I will wear something scandalous and allow you to ogle my frame. You will walk me home and then kiss me goodnight. You are a lucky man." Her smile turned devilish.

"This weekend if you are available. I do not want to be pushy." The devil turned into an angel before my eyes. I laughed. Hard. Harder than I had in a while, and then took a moment to study her. Three cores. I could feel it from here, the density of someone who had been working her Expression development seriously since childhood. She watched me watch her and flared her mana. I gave her a surprised look. She had a distinctively Omazan Aura.

It was almost screaming from her mana signature, thick and clean, though there was not much else mixed into it. She clearly had two more cores but did not use them for much beyond basic healing and some Elementa augmentation. She held still under the look and read it completely wrong. She probably thought I was checking out her body and seemed pleased with the misunderstanding. She was clearly not from Kordar proper. Similar build but more streamlined and graceful.

The copper-red hair and pale complexion did not mesh with the Omazan general look, which was all olive skin and dark hair. Her mother must have married a northern man and left Kordar. I did not even know that was possible. I looked at her. She looked back, entirely comfortable with being looked at, and waited. I thought about what Ellara had just explained to me. Two people. A place. An agreed time. The mutual acknowledgment of interest. She says yes or no. If she says yes, you go.

If something tries to kill you, it has gone wrong. Nothing was trying to kill anyone.

"This weekend is complicated," I said. Something moved in her expression, small, there and gone.

"Next weekend." It was not quite a question.

"Next weekend," I said. The something settled.

"Good, get your hair cut and wear something fitted. You are really quite something even if you do not know it yet." She gave me a short nod, turned, and walked back across the path, unhurried, having gotten what she came for, in no rush because the afternoon was already sorted. The group fell into formation around her without breaking stride. The Valmor boy fell in last, still wearing the same expression. I looked at the sky. So that was what a date felt like from the asking end. Interesting.

I walked back toward the residential quarter and did not think about the Valmor house colors or what Kaereth was going to say when he found out. I was not successful at it at all.