A Fall of Ashes: Chapter 10, Healing
Ashes decides to heal Jakol, but it will take time.
Nine mornings and nine inns later, Ashes squinted, opening the outer inn door as a cool breeze sent goose bumps up her nude body. Gone was the ever-present haze. Jakol and Cass stood on the road waiting, smiles on both uncovered faces. Once again, they’d exchanged her having sex with the staff to cut down the cost of breakfast. This time, both the cook and pot boy took turns.
With an effort, she fought down the impulse to complain. She didn’t like it, but doing anything else in their situation would stand out and call attention to the three of them.
Looking down the road at the shadows three times longer than they were tall, she made her decision. Now would be the time to bring something up. They had at least one more day on the road before Liport, and she had to take care of this now if she was going to.
“We need to find a place where we can hold up in complete privacy for three days before going into Liport,” she said as they made ready to be off.
Both turned to her with puzzlement on their faces.
“Jakol, I will cure your painful joints, but it is going to take days to do so. We have to be somewhere away from town and in private for me to work. I also want to make magical preparations before going into a town as big as Liport.”
A startled look appeared on Jakol’s face.
For the past ten days, they’d stopped every night at inns where he whored her out. This left no time, or privacy, for studying. He and Cass had treated her as a slave and a whore that entire time, just as she had asked them to. In that time, she hadn’t used any spells.
Cass frowned at her.
Had they come to think of her as a slave? She hoped not. Killing them would push her further into the black. She pushed that thought asides.
Part of the reason they moved so slowly had been Jakol’s joint pain. The road beyond Liport to Lowford would be even longer than the one they just traveled. Easing that joint pain would make moving faster possible.
But it wouldn’t guarantee it; she knew that damn well now. Both men were determined to squeeze every coin out of whoring her out that they could. Not that she blamed them for feeling that way. It didn’t anger her that the two would use her that way, given the chance. She had cost them everything that they owned. That was a factor in why she calmly accepted them stopping so early on the road, or reducing the price they charged for her favor from four copper eights, one silver bit, to three copper eights.
Nor did she blame both men for enjoying watching others have her. Had he and his son not been the type to use women that way, she would not have been able to use them to escape the city. Also, had they not liked what they got from her, both would have gone different directions from her after she killed the guards, the moment they felt safe to do so. One of the only reasons they had to stay with her is her whoring for them.
She had little doubt that things would have gone far worse had they forced her to make her own way from Black Water with the guards hunting her. She would not have been able to use roads, or move during the day. The guards grabbed any single woman they caught on the road now in case of illusion. The hunters would have caught her. It still could happen if they went their own way. Just yesterday, guards with captured women passed them on the road. It was Jakol and Cass being the kind of men that they were that had helped her get away, and she would play to it now.
But not begrudging them doing that, isn’t to say she liked them doing that to her.
She debated curing him for two days now. If they, especially Cass, realized how helpless she would be to do this, she could be in trouble. It would take her clearing her mind of everything but healing spells and then using all of them in one setting on him. He would be in better shape than he had been in years and she, utterly helpless. Should he know it, he might try to keep her spell book and keep her a helpless whore. She would get free of him if he did, but it would take weeks, or possibly months, and she might not get her spell book back.
Even that, she wouldn’t blame him for trying. They had a better farm and farmhouse than her father had. They lost it because of her killing those guards there. No, she would not blame him for being someone that would keep her a whore if he could. Almost any man would, given what she owed them.
But that didn’t mean she wanted to be one.
Curing him of his joint pain would go a long way to settling her debt with him. She had ideas for settling the rest. It would also get rid of some of her black karma, returning her closer to the Grey balance. That she needed to do, too. She would cure him; but keep from him the real reason she needed privacy was not just to heal him, but so she would not face anyone when she was helpless.
He grumbled. “Three days without shelter and with little food we have will be hard.”
“Two eights will buy us a sack of oats enough to last it,” she said, surprised at his reluctance to a level of healing a peasant like he could never afford.
Grunting, he turned and started down the road.
After walking on some more in silence, he said. “Are you curing me because you are planning to leave us in Liport?”
Surprised, she said, “What, no. I need you to get to Lowford and beyond safely.” So that was the reluctance. She also regretted saying she needed them, giving him even more leverage than he had. When was she going to learn to keep things like that to herself?
“Then do you need us enough to put up in Liport for three weeks in an inn if I can swing us a small room to share?”
Her suspicion grew. “Why?”
“Case and I are going to have to take work as guards before we can get to another place. I want to get us bows there. In three weeks, we should have enough for two, but one will do if not.”
She groaned, and her blood boiled. Good bows cost, a lot. The bastard planned to earn a large part of that whoring her out in whatever inn he found. Ashes also knew damn well he had been planning to do that and not even ask her. She would have been whoring in an inn full time before she figured that out. It was her reminding him that she was a mage and could go her own way and make her own decision that had him telling her now.
She let her anger into her voice with him for the first time. “I don’t like it. I don’t like being a whore, even part time. You are going to make me whore in an inn full time for three weeks in a city that has strong rules on the proper behavior of slaves?”
His voice was monotone. “Are you refusing to do it?”
Damn him. Would he leave her to make her own way if she didn’t? That thought sent shivers down her spine.
She let out a deep breath. “No, I’m not going to refuse,” though it was tempting, oh so tempting. “But I don’t like you doing this to me, and you were going to just do it to me without even asking.”
Not even facing her, he said. “Do you still want to stop in the woods a few days to get ready and heal me?”
She thought it over, then said, “Yes.” She didn’t think he would try to take her books the moment she healed him, and him healed for the longer leg of the journey still made the most sense.
They took the next farm track off the main road. With the help of one of her cantrips, a local farmer who sold them the grain told them of a herder’s cabin not in use this time of year, two hours further from the road.
They came upon the small, cramped hut long before the sun reached zenith. The moment they set their pack down, Cass pushed her down on his pack, her bare ass in the air. She wasn’t in the mood, not that it mattered to him.
When he finished, Jakol wanted something more demanding from her.
She sighed. If she insisted, they quit treating her as their slave while here, there would be problems. She climbed into his lap with her fake smile on, like a good slave would.
After dinner that night, once she sat down next to the fire with her spell book, they left her alone.
**
Before the sun was fully up, Cass woke her by taking her from behind. She was their whore-slave again.
“Breakfast,” Jakol said, next the small fire he’d started, the moment Cass was done with her.
It so tempted her to say do it yourself, but there were too many still looking for her. She didn’t want to leave, or worst, try to collect that reward for her. She got up off the floor and started breakfast.
**
As soon as had the bows and oat pan clean and was putting them away, Jakol picked up the pan and sat back down. Tapping the bottom of it, he commanded, “Dance,” the way he did when he was looking for customers in an inn.
She had become fairly good at it, and if a man had the coin for her, she could usually get him to part with it. She began moving to his beat, putting everything into it, focusing on him just the way she had the men in the inn. It wasn’t long before his trews were down and she was straddling him.
This time, taking turns, the men decide to show her they had even more endurance than that first morning at their farm, having her every which way right though morning, lunch, and up to dinner, which Jakol made.
Only then did she get to go out looking for her spell ingredients.
**
Cooking breakfast the next day, she said, “I didn’t find any sheep root.”
Jakol looked at her in surprise. “Sheep root? It’s a lot more common in the east, but there should still be some around. After dinner tonight, Cass and I will help you look for it and the other things you need.”
From the look on both faces, they planned that today was to be a repeat of yesterday.
Could she push for lunch? Her words from the start of their journey came back to her. They were to treat her as a slave until evening. “After dinner would be fine, and if you see something good for the stew pot, pick that up, too.”
He grinned at her, “Sure thing.”
**
Those ingredients were far less common here in the east than they had been in the west. Between that and only looking evening, three days turned into five. Yet they did have luck with things for the pot. Cass found plenty of roots and berries to augment their oats every day.
The morning of the sixth day, she began healing Jakol.
“I haven’t moved so easily since I was young,” Jakol said, surprise filling his voice when she fished. “How long will it last?”
Exhaustion filling her voice, Ashes replied, “The damage causing the stiff joints is healed. It will last until you damage them again. You are older and the joints are softer, so you can do it easier than you could when you were younger. You will feel even better tomorrow after you get a good night’s sleep.”
She felt far more naked without spells than she did walking nude into roadside inns. It had been a long time since she had done that much magic at once. With aching wariness, she moved next to the fire and opened her spell book. “Now, if we are going to not be stuck here tomorrow too, I am exhausted, need to study and then a very long sleep.”
When he didn’t object and let her study, the tension slowly left her shoulders.
**
Jakol, instead of Cass, woke her before the sun was up with far more vigor than was his norm.
“This is great, I do feel even better,” he said, standing up to dress. “We will make Liport well before nightfall.” He was so eager to be on his way that he made them breakfast when Cass took his morning turn with her.
Packing after breakfast took little time, and the sun was still touching the horizon when Jakol surprised her by putting a leash on her then moved behind her with a leather strap.
Shivering, Ashes asked. “Can’t we wait until we get to the road, at least?”
“I want you used to this leash, but we can leave your hands free until we get to the road.”
She sighed, unwilling to argue it further.
He placed the strap he’d been about to tie her hands with in her pack, grabbed her leash, and led her out the door, setting a much faster pace than any of them were used to.