Sexy Steampunk Babes

William struggled not to wince as the door to his alchemical storage room slowly cracked partially open.

“Goddesses’ mercy,” Marline hissed from behind him. “How is it worse the second time?”

“Because we added a few things the last time we were here?” William said as he unhooked the tripwire attached to the door before pulling it fully open.

“The potatoes are what’s making that smell!?” Marline hissed as she stepped inside.

“Yep. Never underestimate the power of potatoes and a few warm summer days. Plus there’s a few other things in here,” William tried not to breathe through his nose as he closed the door behind him after stepping inside himself. “Light. One charge. Instant activation. Right hand.”

At his words, the room lit up as his right hand started to glow with an ethereal light. One that revealed… three barrels and a crate.

Glancing over, he noticed Marline staring at his hand.

“What?” he asked.

The dark elf shrugged. “Just seems a bit wasteful is all. Day’s not over yet and now you’re down a spell charge.”

William shrugged. “Better that than bringing a candle in here.”

“Why?”

William’s gaze flicked over to a nearby – sealed – barrel. “Just take my word for it.”

“Well that’s not ominous at all,” the girl muttered as she walked over to the nearby crate.

William smirked as he followed after her. She didn’t know the half of it.

Which was probably for the best. Given how she’d responded to the whole ‘Al’hundra situation’ he doubted she’d take well to learning that the entire room could theoretically go up if an errant spark happened to get inside one of the nearby barrels.

Admittedly, a single candle was unlikely to achieve that, given the barrels had lids on them, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Given just how dangerous just opening the door to this room could be given the booby trap on the door, he felt it was perfectly reasonable to err on the side of caution by not adding any more danger to what was already a fairly volatile environment.

On the bright side, if I ever do fuck opening the door up, I probably won’t have more than half a second to regret it, he thought.

So no, he didn’t feel even a smidgen of regret in making use of a precious spell slot to light the way while they were in here.

Fishing a second key out of his shirt, he ignored his companion’s gags as he unlocked the chest to reveal the collection of mouldy looking vegetables within. Squishing his discomfort, he reached through it to unhook the crate’s false bottom.

Admittedly, said false bottom wasn’t particularly good given that it was trying to mask a space large enough to fit two orbs the size of bowling balls – that glowed – but that was fine. It was simply the last line of defence. One that would only come into play in the event some ne’er-do-well chose to break into an alchemical storage room, get past his booby trap, fail to ignite the contents of the barrels by looking into them, before finally digging through a crate full of rotten potatoes.

Mostly it was there to keep the glow of the orbs from being spotted while they sat at the bottom of the pile.

“Like I told you, safe and sound.” William said as he pulled out one of the mithril cores before tossing it to Marline.

“Ugh!” The girl yelped as she caught the thing. “I wish you wouldn’t do that!”

He smirked, resisting the urge to point out that the orb she was holding had spent about a decade at the bottom of the ocean being used as a scratching post by a ship-sized squid before they recovered it. A little rough handling wasn’t about to damage it.

No, that would require specialized tools of the kind that could only be found in a shard-workshop.

“Are your folks ready to collect yet?” he asked, gesturing to the second orb.

Marline’s scowl turned into a pensive expression as she shook her head. “Not yet. When we spoke, she implied she’d be sending my aunts to collect it in person, but I’ve not heard anything since.”

William nodded. That wasn’t too unexpected. What was, was that Marline had apparently chosen to communicate her ‘acquisition of a mithril core’ over orb.”

Unless…

“You spoke in code, right?”

Given the silver color of her iris, it wasn’t hard to miss the way his teammate rolled her eyes at his question. “Of course.”

The ‘I’m not an idiot’ went unspoken. Because while no one was foolish enough to state aloud that the Crown monitored Orb communications, it was common knowledge that they did.

And while the law around ‘scavenged cores’ was explicit enough that William nor Marline had any reason to fear censure for how they’d acquired their cores, the Crown would definitely have questions.

Questions William – and by extension, Marline – had no interest in answering for a little longer yet.

“Out of curiosity, what’s the cover story for your aunts coming to visit?” he asked.

Marline chuckled lowly. “Apparently I’m madly in love with a boy on my team.”

“Me?” he asked, trying not to laugh.

Once more, the dark elf rolled her eyes. “Yep. And given just how out of character thoughts of romance of any kind would be for me, you could say it caught my mother’s attention. Enough that it wasn’t hard to clue her in on everything else while still speaking in code.”

Yeah, William could see the dark elf’s mother being surprised by her daughter’s sudden infatuation with a boy. Never mind the fact that he was very publicly betrothed to a very powerful family, he was also pretty certain Marline was gay.

Oh, she’d hidden it well enough, but over the last few months he’d managed to catch her gaze lingering just a little longer than strictly necessary here or there. Not on him. Never on him.

But on the other members of the team to be sure.

Honestly, in retrospect he actually felt a little foolish for not figuring it out sooner.

It neatly explained her discomfort at being forced to share his bed for the geass, as well as her general antipathy towards him when they’d met. Even her refusal to shower with the team could be explained away as some kind of… outmoded idea of chivalry on her part.

And as much as he hated to give any legitimacy to the idea of the ‘man hating lesbian trope’, the fact was, there did exist people who preferred the same sex who also tended to have little patience for the opposite sex.

It was an over inflated stereotype, but it did exist.

With that in mind, he was actually happy that Marline had so quickly managed to overcome her internal misandrist mindset after meeting him.

Actually, with that in mind, perhaps it was more a result of lack of exposure to men than anything else?

In his experience, that tended to be the root cause of most kinds of bigotry. A lack of experience and understanding combined with some other factor.

So yes, if Marline’s mother knew of her daughter’s – likely hidden - orientation, she’d definitely start to pay attention if said daughter developed an interest in a man.

Again, an engaged man.

To a family powerful enough to crush the diminished Greygrass Household without so much as breaking stride.

“Does she… believe you? That you have a core?” he asked.

It certainly didn’t sound believable. Hell, he’d needed to swear a geass with Marline before she’d come around to believing he could acquire one. And even then he was certain she’d held doubts.

“Who knows?” She said. “We certainly couldn’t talk freely. Still, she knows I’m not the kind for idle flights of fancy, even if our conversation implied as much to any third parties that might be listening.”

Her hands slid over across the smooth glowing surface of the core she was holding. “To that end, in addition to sending my aunts to meet the man I was apparently so interested in, she also said she’d be ‘getting the house ready’, in the event you wanted to visit our estate.”

In other words, they’d be getting the ship ready to accept a core.

The dark elf’s expression turned ruthful. “Though make no mistake. She will want to thank you at some point. Needs to, even, given the service you’ve done for us.”

William was about to say something, but his teammate cut him off. “I’m serious. What you’ve done for us… it’s beyond words. And I’m aware that I’ve not been as vocal in my thanks as I could have been. Especially for a boon of this size.”

William shrugged. “We had a deal.”

She laughed. “I think we both know that you didn’t actually need me that night. You could easily have accomplished it all yourself.”

Perhaps, but it would have been riskier than it might have been otherwise. The boat might have drifted or his decompression spell might have failed, leaving him to surface fully suffering from the bends.

Admittedly, the latter was something he might have been able to work around by controlling his ascent speed, but given just how fast a curious kraken might have been encroaching on the deceased Al’Hundra’s territory, time had been of the essence.

No, Marline’s presence had ultimately been superfluous, but that’s true for most redundancies.

They were useless right up until they weren’t.

…Still, he knew just looking at Marline that she wasn’t about to accept that.

As far as she was concerned he’d done her and her family an incredible favour while asking for little to nothing in return.

“To that end, while I may not be our House Matriarch, I know in my heart that I speak for her now, so listen to me when I say that whatever you need, the House of Greygrass is in your debt. From now until the time our children’s children take their last breath in this world, our swords are yours,” she said solemnly.

Part of him wanted to dismiss her words out of hand. To say she owed him nothing beyond her friendship. But that was the old him. The one who’d been born in a different world under different stars.

The him of here and now was different.

“I accept,” he said. “And though it pains my heart to do so, I will tell you now that I’ll likely have to hold you to that oath before long.”

The dark elf grinned, white teeth glinting in the gloom of the old storage room – as peculiar a place for such a solemn declaration as any William could think of.

“I never would have guessed,” she snarked as her eyes flitted toward the barrels behind him and the nearby crate.

William rolled his eyes as he conceded the point. Marline, more than most, had seen enough of his secrets to guess that his future plans weren’t likely to stop at just breaking off an unwanted betrothal.

Even if doing so without sparking off a civil war is probably the single most complicated part of my immediate ambitions, he thought.

Because it was a difficult problem.

Were this all just about breaking off his upcoming engagement, it would be too easy. All he’d have to do was provide the Crown with something valuable enough for them to consider war with the Blackstones worth the cost of securing it.

A few mithril cores would probably do it, he thought. I wouldn’t even have to part with any of my tech.

And they’d go for it. They couldn't afford not to, given that the alternative would mean those cores would end up in the hands of their political enemies.

The problem was that the current administration would probably lose that fight – even without the duchy of Summerfield switching sides.

Though I suppose they could just kill me and take said cores on the sly, he thought.

That would actually be a pretty neat solution to the problem if the Crown could get away with it.

The problem was that then he’d be dead – and he had far too much he still needed to get done before he allowed himself to die now.

So instead he had to take a different route and tackle a much more difficult problem.

…The problem of making an entire duchy back down from their chance at ascendancy, without so much as a single shot being fired or a drop of blood being spilled.

At least outside of a practice arena, he thought grimly.

All while his family tried to stab him in the back… oh, and without him giving away too much of the technology locked away inside his brain.

Because that’d start off a civil war just as surely as the crown interfering in his upcoming nuptials. The possibility of either side gaining too large an advantage would start off a conflict just as surely as him walking up to Tala and shooting her in the face – as the the side that didn’t receive said technology would move to attack before said tech could become widespread enough that the the tides turned against them.

It was an awful tangled mess.

With all that in mind, was it any wonder that his plans to do just that felt more like walking a tightrope over a pond of hungry piranha than anything even remotely approaching sanity?

“You ok?” Marline asked gently.

“Just thinking about how much of a pain in the ass the next few… decades are likely to be,” William muttered, mostly to himself.

“Wow,” the dark elf chuckled. “Really making me feel great about the fact that my family is now tied to you for the foreseeable future.”

It was actually rather touching that despite saying the words, he didn’t hear even a hint of regret in her tone.

She’d meant what she said. Truly. Deeply. And he didn’t doubt her family would be the same.

“Is your skyship flight capable?” he asked, changing the subject.

To his relief, the dark elf accepted it without issue. “She’ll need a little work, but nothing more than a metaphorical spring clean. Something our people will have done before my aunts arrive.”

That made sense. Even if it didn’t have a mithril core, the hull of a skyship was still a massive investment of money, time and resources. If it was seen to be rusting or falling into disrepair, the Greygrass’s ran the risk of either the Crown or a ducal family claiming the ship ‘for the good of the realm’.

Oh, said parties would pay Marline’s family for it, but William doubted it would be a particularly good deal.

Though it did make him wonder just how many skyship hulls were sitting dormant in warehouses across the kingdom? He couldn’t imagine too many given the sheer cost of maintaining turning them into little more than a money-sink, but he had to imagine there were at least a few more families like Marline’s who were desperately paying said costs in hopes of reclaiming their former noble status.

Other than that, he imagined the Crown might have one or two hulls in storage, ready to be put back into service in the event of a new mithril core discovery.

“Do you think they’ll have any trouble getting here and extracting the core unseen?” he asked.

Otherwise they ran the risk of being intercepted by ‘bandits’ if it was known they were carrying an unprotected core.

Because anything less than being surrounded by a few thousand tons of ship-grade warship armour was considered ‘unprotected’ in this world.

“As things are now, definitely.” Marline said, before gesturing to the orb in his hands. “After you unveil this thing to all and sundry? Less so.”

She eyed him. “It wouldn’t take a genius to connect you unveiling a previously unknown mithril core and Al’Hundra washing up a few weeks ago. The ‘how’ will definitely have them scratching their heads, but the connection will remain.”

Oh, William didn’t doubt it. Just as he knew he’d be fending off some awkward questions in the next few days.

Fortunately, the fact that he’d be in the public spotlight would keep any parties from just dragging him off into a backroom to pry said answers out of him with a set of pliers.

Neither the Blackstones or the Crown could make that kind of move without being blocked by the other.

After the duel though… well, he’d deal with that problem when he got to it.

“There’s no chance you could delay this for a few more days?” Marline asked plaintively. “At least until my aunts arrived.”

He winced. “Would that I could. Unfortunately, I can’t run the risk. Griffith got back to me a few hours ago about my spell-bolt being tentatively approved for use on the Floats.”

The rubber bullets he’d shown off had tipped things in his favour for now.

Unfortunately, the moment he’d handed said weapon over for testing, a countdown on how long it would be until the Blackstones were made aware of it began.

If he wanted his little trick to remain a surprise for the upcoming bout – a bout he needed every advantage he could get in – he needed to kick off the duel as soon as possible.

He explained as much before continuing. “I’m also worried about my mother throwing more wrenches into the works.” He shook his head. “If this is going to happen, it needs to happen now.”

Marline frowned, before nodding understandably. “If you say so. We’ll just have to hope that my aunts arrive soon and they leave before too many people draw a connection between you and Al’Hunda, and them arriving and going.”

He shrugged. “With any luck, your little ‘romantic liaison’ smokescreen will throw things off.”

She nodded, though it wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. Still, Marline’s aunts were veterans, and if they were anything like the girl herself, they’d be very capable.

…Even if technically they’d been part of the generation that had lost the previous mithril core.

He shook his head. He had little doubt they’d spent the last twenty years preparing to make up for that failure.

“Alright,” she muttered. “What will be will be.”

She delicately passed the mithril core back to him, though he was amused to see her almost physical reluctance to do so.

She sighed. “Let’s go see your fiancée and get ready to lose this thing on an incredibly stupid bet.”

He smiled, patting her on the shoulder as he walked past.

“That’s the spirit!”

---------------------------------

The dining hall was never quiet around dinner time.

Unlike breakfast and lunch, which was eaten as quickly as the average cadet could shovel it into their mouths, the evening meal was a much more relaxed affair. One that allowed cadets to unwind a little after a long day.

It even came with dessert options.

Certainly, there was still an evening inspection yet to come, along with a myriad other chores that the average cadet needed to get done, but ultimately dinner represented the end of the service day.

So it was that William wasn’t too surprised by the veritable wall of noise that slammed into him as he stepped into the massive room, long tables filled with cadets of all sorts chattering loudly away to each other.

Naturally, it was strictly divided by colour, with each house sticking to their own. From there it was divided by year group.

The only exceptions being a small back table occupied by a small smattering of instructors whose role it was to ensure that some small smattering of discipline was maintained, if only by dint of them being present.

William was pretty sure said duty took place on a rotation, as he knew for a fact that the rest of the staff ate elsewhere, though he’d naturally never had reason to enter the staff cafeteria.

Still, all that noise fell away remarkably quickly as he stepped into the room. In clumps at first, but it spread like a wildfire as people noticed their neighbours falling silent and turned to see what had caused it. In turn, others looked up as the ambient noise of the room fell away.

In moments, the final voice was silent as the last few cadets finished what they were saying and looked up to see William standing there, his team around him.

But they weren’t looking at him.

They were looking at what he was holding.

A Mithril Core.

And as generally unflappable as William liked to consider himself, he could resist the small animal part of his brain that tried to squawk in panic as he beheld the myriad emotions flashing across the faces that were all now staring in his direction.

Disbelief. Shock. Greed. Lust. Amusement. Curiosity. Anger.

Even the Instructors were no exception, as they seemed stunned in place by what he’d just walked into the room with.

He could all-but feel his team shuffling uncomfortably behind him.

But just as all eyes were on him, he had eyes for only one person present. Ignoring all of them, he strode through the aisles of tables towards the end of the room where the third years sat.

His target hadn’t been hard to find, despite the myriad similarly dressed people around her.

Because the crowd was positioned around her. She was not within the crowd.

It was a subtle difference to see, but it existed.

Tala Blackstone of House Blackstone sat at the head of the Blackstone table in pride of place. A position even more vaunted in some ways than that of an Instructor.

Certainly Willaim didn’t doubt that in many ways the Instructors of House Blackstone did actually answer to the heir. Especially now, in her third year. But one from graduation.

“Tala,” he said as he came to stop in front of her table, his voice all but echoing in the silence.

Credit where credit was due, the expression of surprise on his fiancées face had faded before he even reached the table. Now it looked studiously blank as she gazed into his eyes.

“William,” her voice was as hard as iron. “…What do you think you’re doing?”

He actually smiled at that, not least of all because he had genuinely no idea how to answer her question.

At least, not in a manner that would satisfy the girl.

Because it was a question that could have so many meanings.

Still, he had but one answer.

“Challenging you, my dear fiancée. To a duel.” His grin only grew as her eyebrow quirked inquisitively. “Tomorrow. On the Floats. With the rising of the sun. I, William Ashfield challenge you, Tala Blackstone to a team duel. For my right to break off our betrothal once and for all.”

He saw the flicker of realization in her eyes as she heard his words and her gaze flickered down to the core in his hands. But there was nothing she could do as he continued.

“You needed to go this far?” she asked quietly, though it carried quite far across the cafeteria.

He shrugged. “I did. I am well aware of how often my lamentations about our upcoming nuptials seem as nothing to your ears.” He raised the orb up in one hand. “So this time I have brought something that might make them more receptive to my words.”

He glanced around. “And I also made sure to pick a suitably… impactful venue for my throwing of the gauntlet.”

He could tell she wanted to know where he’d gotten the core. How he’d gotten it. Because the notion that he had one strained belief.

But he did have one and anyone with even a hint of magical ability could sense it as he channelled just a hint of his aether into the device – which in turn started to churn out masses of blue green smoke.

More than any mage could produce, for if the average mage’s raw aether output was akin to a kitchen tap, then a mithril core’s was a roaring river.

Not the kind of thing that could be faked as a veritable stream of lighter than air smoke flew up into the air to waft around the rafters before filtering through the open windows outside.

That, more than anything else, was proof that what he was holding was real.

“Well, you have my attention,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Good, because I wager this core entirely and without reservation, my peers as witness.”

He luxuriated in the horrified gasps that spread through the room at his words as he soldier on.

“A mithril core for a mere chance to escape the stigma of being tied to a family of slavers. Because I’ll have no part of it. Not now. Not ever. So, one match. Your team against mine. On the Floats. With our ancestors and the gods themselves as witness.”

As well as half the kingdom, because the viewing orbs would definitely be booked to capacity for a scandal of this size. Even at such short notice, the news would spread and no one would want to miss this match.

It was like something out of a story book, after all.

All that was missing was finding out that he’d been supplied the core by his ‘real true love’.

Still, storybook setup or not, he could see others around him smirking or wincing at his words.

Because to them it didn’t sound like a match. It sounded like an execution.

A team of first years going up against a third year team wasn’t a match. It was a slaughter.

Which was why Tala was stuck.

She didn’t want to accept. He could see it. Sure, she wanted the mithril core – who wouldn’t? - but not so much as to jeopardize her family’s alliance with his.

Because a single core was not worth risking losing access to the combined might of the Summerfield dukedom.

…The problem was that no one but her knew that.

All they saw was a moronic young male from a tiny countship practically serving up a core on a silver platter to her. All she had to do was risk losing a fairly unappealing betrothal. Hell, even if she won, no one would bat an eye if she broke off the betrothal anyway after a stunt like this, taking the core and moving onto a more compliant and appealing match.

No, there was no way for her to refuse this duel. Not without being labelled a coward of the highest order.

A death sentence at her level of politics.

He saw the rage in her eyes as she reached that realization.

“I accept, William Ashfield. And know that for all that I will enjoy acquiring another core for the House of Blackstone, that enjoyment will pale in comparison to the joy I will receive from heaping upon you a much needed dose of reality.”

William just grinned, even as the Instructors finally managed to shake off the shock that had overcome them and started marching as one towards him and his team.

“I look forward to it, Tala. From the bottom of my heart.”

If only because this entire farce would finally be over with…

He had much more important things to do than indulge in childish schoolyard squabbles after all.

No matter how difficult they may well turn out to be, he thought grimly.

Because the dice had now been rolled and he was far from certain as to whether they’d land in his favor.