Power Trio

The tour’s got one more stop on their journey down Daria’s east coast. Then they’re chartering a portal to the southern tip of the continent. Dee’s glad for Anise. Poor little cutie shivers all the time out here. A warmer climate will be good for her. And maybe let her show off those butter-yellow legs of hers. That wound-up elf deserves to feel desired, maybe get herself someone to warm her bed.

Dee’s looking forward to getting her tan back. Do elves tan? She wonders. Is Anise that yellow all over, or is she a little more cream-colored under there?

And while we’re talking about colors, how natural is that green on her hair, Dee wonders. Is it all green? Her green lips, those are certainly the real deal. She’s kept an eye on them while the high elf’s eaten, just to see if they smudge.

Not that close an eye, of course. That’s her employer. She’s just a naturally curious person, is all.

They’ve spent the last couple days moving. Nick’s been getting surer and surer on that rhino of his. Dee picked Doink to give him an undemanding ride; the ornery old fella has one of the smoothest gaits in their herd. She watched Nick ride today for a while. He’s learned how to post in, matching his own movements to that of his rhino so that going long distance doesn’t pulverize his pelvis anymore. She reckons he’s just about ready to trade up for something younger and stronger. She wonders if he’d be able to tough a faster ride out, on a spirited mount with some fire in her. Or him. It. We’re talking about rhinos here.

Okay. Dee’s not gonna dance around it. She’s been thinking some thoughts about the newest member of Pack Voraag.

Some rules you don’t say out loud. You just make them up for yourself, and you might not even know they’re around until a situation comes around that wakes you up to them. Little inside-voice rules.

One of Dee’s is that she doesn’t have sex with her pack.

It’s the one place she feels herself lacking. The one tool on the packmistress’ tool belt she never learned how to use. There are packlords, good ones, who use sex to keep their entire pack in line. It’s a handy resource. A reward you never run out of. Niva used to employ it sometimes, giving nights in her bed out for the best hunting haul, or for completing shitwork jobs, or just because someone seemed down in the dumps.

But that free and easy sexuality her sister had, that so many of her pack have. She can’t cotton to it, can’t treat it like the simple trinket they do. Whenever she’s tried, she felt too much of a distance, or even worse, too much of a closeness. The other Voraags all picked up on it pretty quick and the propositions stopped. Nobody gave her a hard time about it. Outside of the occasional furtive make-out session to spark or modulate her tangr’ak, showing Nicky Voraag the ladies is the closest she’s ever come to that sort of thing. She’s still not sure why she did it. Maybe she shouldn’t have. But hey, it worked. The guy is motivated.

Most orcs who feel like she does get themselves a mate. And most others settle down with one after their wild years. That’s the next step. Imprint on someone or someones, and spend the rest of your days in the bliss of dopamine depot. But it’s always sounded like a bother to Dee, needing someone that badly. She’s loved before, really loved, not romantically but truly, and it ended just about the worst way it ever could have, in blood and sorrow.

She’s gone a few years without thinking about the mate thing. But then she met Kell Kamiyon, and now every day she sees the way the drummer’s whole being glows every time she touches one of her mates. And Dee’s wondering, again, if she could have something like that.

Turns out the guitar is great for setting aside your sexual frustration and indulging in a different kind of frustration altogether. Nick coaches patience in all things related to the instrument, and her fingers have grown their calluses and finally stopped stinging, but they still feel too big for this thing.

She’s embarrassed when she plays in front of anyone, which isn’t a feeling she’s used to. It’s been a long time since she’s had such a gap between what she can do and what she wishes she could.

Legendary have an extra-large tent they use as a studio—it’s some kind of Earth import with flexible metal poles and thin but insulating material. There’s a climate-controlled instrument cabinet in here, as well as a stack of practice amps and, improbably, a cotton tapestry of some kind hanging from the wall showing a cartoon woman in a state of undress. A headshot photo of a sleepy-looking ash elf has been pasted over her face. Legendary’s been generous in letting Nick and Dee and Anise use it outside of the band’s practice hours. Especially because Dee isn’t ready to play anywhere in public.

She’s there now, putting in some practice time before turning in for the evening. It’s been a long day of travel, and they’re in half-unpacked mode to bunk down for the night. Setting up the practice tent every night struck Dee as an extravagance, but that was back before she was using it. A girl’s allowed to be a hypocrite now and again.

Dee tries a major pentatonic scale. Her stupid ring finger is getting in the way. Such a dinky little thing, this guitar. Nick holds it like it’s a paintbrush, pulls angelic choirs from it. In Dee’s hands it feels like a toy.

“Ding dong.” A man’s voice from outside.

Dee clamps down on the neck of the guitar, stills its sad little shrieks. “C’mon in,” she calls.

Evan Kamiyon ducks through the tent flap. “I was heading to the trailer and heard you working. How’s the journey going?”

“It’s going,” Dee says. “Nick’s got me working on some scales. Pentatonic and shit.”

“Ahh, the good old standby.” Evan grins. “You’re gonna use that for the rest of your musical career, more or less.”

Dee clicks her tongue. “Don’t know if that’s in the cards. Packmistress is kind of a full-time job.”

“You’re working hard. We all appreciate it. This is a good way of unwinding.” His head tilts. “It ought to be, anyway. Are you having a good time?”

“I’m getting better.”

“You are. But are you having a good time, I’m wondering.”

“It ain’t always about that,” Dee says. “Gotta put in the hours, right?”

“Sure. Sure.” Evan rubs his beard. “But does that guitar feel small to you? Maybe a little too delicate?”

Dee frowns. How can he tell? “Sorta.”

The edges of Evan’s eyes crinkle. “Let me try something. Do you mind?”

“Course not. It’s your spot, man.”

He zips himself out of his boots as he steps further into Legendary’s practice tent. He opens the climate-controlled instrument rack and pulls something from it—a cream-colored guitar. It’s bigger than Dee’s, and it only has four strings on it.

“This…” He plugs it into one of the space’s amps and flips a switch. A low, grounded background sound issues from it. “This is a bass.” He holds it out. “Here.”

Dee takes it from his hand. The amp crackles and hums as her fingers close around the strings. “How do I play it?”

“The notes are the same as the bottom four on a guitar, just a whole octave lower,” Evan says. “So it’s similar. Though usually we play it one note at a time.”

“Why’s that?”

He grins. “How about you give it a shot?”

Dee finds the pentatonic scale she was playing. It starts over here on A, she’s pretty sure. The fifth dot. The frets are bigger on this thing. So’s the neck and so’s the strings. Everything’s bigger. She plays a note.

The air fills with a low, tuneful detonation. It rumbles in her gut and pushes against her face and changes her life. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, that’s nice.”

* * *

Dee stomps into her yurt. Nick’s in here practicing his packtongue script, sounding out syllables while he copies spiky characters from a history book into a spiral-bound notepad. A kettlebell lays nearby; Dee’s got him doing swings on his active recovery days.

“Nicholas you put that homework down right now and you come with me.” Dee takes the book and thwaps it shut.

“What? Okay. What’s happening?” Nick hops into his boots as Dee pulls him toward the yurt flap.

“What’s happening is that Evan Kamiyon just gave me a bass,” Dee says. “Why didn’t you tell me about basses?”

She drags him into the practice tent and plugs Evan’s gift into the amp. There’s that hum again and she’s on the precipice, bass in her hands like a sledgehammer about to shatter the world open, to let free the sound of its primordial depths. She plucks a note and shudders with her vibrating string.

“God damn.” She slides her finger up the neck and thrills to the way it pulls her echoing thump with it. “And here I thought a gun was like having a dick.”

Nick is pulling his battered loaner axe from the cabinet. “You might wanna turn down. We’re close to Legendary’s trailer.”

“Nope.” Dee draws another growl forth on the second string. “The racket they get outta that goblin, they don’t got a leg to stand on with noise complaints.”

He cracks a grin big enough she can see his stubby tusks. “You’re the boss. You wanna do something freeform or what?”

“I want to incant.” She pulls a matchbook from her discarded satchel and places it on an ashtray. “Let’s try the fire thing again.”

Nick’s hands grip his guitar tight. “You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. I wanna do magic.” She hops from foot to foot. “Do magic with me, Nick.”

“Last time I tried this spell I ended up naked and dying in a snowdrift.”

“Ah ah.” Dee raises a contradictory pointer finger. “Last time you tried this spell, you got distracted by my cans. And you’ve seen ‘em now. So I’d say we’re good to go.”

“Shit, Dee.” Nick laughs. “You’re really wired.”

“Yes I am, Slim. Now play. Your packmistress commands you.”

Nick thumbs a pick into his hand and starts up. His sound’s different with an electric in his hand, more urgent and jagged. The man changes, too, spreading his stance and squaring his shoulders, clutching his guitar like it’s a sparring opponent as he makes it grind and squeal.

“One tone at a time,” he calls over his cacophonous introduction. “G major scale. Play like it’s half guitar and half drum, single notes. You ready?”

“Ready as fuck.”

He tames his wild distortion as he tears toward the verse. “Two, three, four…”

From the first note struck, she can tell. This is different. This is better. Every note she plays is palatial, a volcanic mountain of sound, and Nick’s searing guitar is the plume of magma bursting forth at its peak. With primal joy, she throws herself into the rhythm, playing to the savage beat of her heart as Nick adjusts his chording to match. He nods rapidly and throws an odd Earthling gesture her way with pointer and pinky stuck out. Then he executes a breakneck maneuver with his whammy bar, forcing his guitar into an indignant shriek. He sweeps her thunderous bassline into a rising vortex of music.

Up he goes into a blistering line of staccato notes, and she goes up too, onto her highest strings, and the bass squalls and howls in this new register. And there’s a spiral forming before her, twisting past the tent and past her guitarist infinitely into the horizon. It turns like a kaleidoscope, and she feels herself rise…

The battery lamps snap off. The amps crackle and die. The tent goes dark but for the thin light of the moon that filters through the material. And a pair of eyes, piercing amethyst eyes that ensnare her and catch her breath in her throat.

Nick’s voice, low and reverberant. “Light the fire.”

Something flows through the firmament, from him to her, and fills her with power and purpose. She knows exactly what to do. Her arm rises. Her fingers splay outward. The matchbook hisses and bursts into flame, curling and sputtering in the ashtray. Its firefly light illuminates Nick’s outline.

The lamps flicker back on. The whirr of the amps reassert themselves into the silence. Nick pumps his fist. “Let’s fucking go!” Dee whoops and rips her bass from her chest as she crosses the room in two bounds and grabs Nick into an embrace.

“Fuckin’ A, man!” She lifts him up a couple inches and dangles him off the ground. “Nick, that was amazing. I mean, what the hell? That felt fucking amazing.”

He extracts his arms from her bearhug and holds her back. Slim Nicky is not quite so slim; she feels ropy muscle threading through his biceps. She does a couple playful swings back and forth, then lowers him to the ground.

She starts to pull away, but stops when she feels his grip tighten. Their faces end up two or three inches from each other.

It’s hard to notice with the shade of his heavy brow over them, but this close, she sees the bands of violet iris around his dilated pupils. The same color as the fire she saw burning in them, in the dark. His brows lower with his gaze as it wanders downward to her lips.