Power Trio

Okay, this riding arrangement is not going to work.

Dee is wearing a cotton v-neck today and Anise’s head is positioned directly between her big green titties. She scrambles apologetically off of Hammer. “Actually, I’ll ride in the back today.”

Dee looks at her quizzically, but helps her up again. “Hold on now, boss, okay? There’s handholds by your hips, but it might be more stable to just hold my waist.”

“The handholds are seriously fine, thank you Dee.” Anise’s knuckles are white against them. Dee gives her an affable nod and with a click of her tongue eases Hammer into a trot. Anise yelps and grabs the packmistress around the waist after all, face pressed up against the wide plain of her back. She feels the rumble as Dee chuckles.

Her stomach is so soft under Anise’s fingers, and then suddenly so firm as the orc adjusts her posture and her abs harden.

Anise suppresses a whine as her subconscious ruthlessly takes the wheel from her responsible mind. This was such a mistake. She thought she took care of this last night. What kind of manager is she if she can’t even manage her dumbass libido?

Dee feels made to be held. Her butt flexes with the effort of steering her rhino and it’s so round and shapely and big as it nudges against Anise and spreads the elf’s golden thighs further apart. Her broad chest swoops into a tapered waist, perfect for draping your arms around. She is the perfect combination of voluptuous squish and steely warrior strength. Anise wants to sit in the soft seat of her lap and listen to her heartbeat and fall asleep on her. Anise wants to lick her thick trapezius and see what her sweat tastes like. Anise wants off this damn rhino before she starts dryhumping her head security contractor.

But she’s learned long and difficult lessons about how rare it is to get what you want. So instead she holds on and lets Dee carry her through the Old World on rhinoback and tries to douse the flames that dance beneath her skin.

Dee slows them to a walking pace as the caravan falls in behind her. “Ask you something?”

“Sure,” Anise says, grateful for the distraction.

“You say ‘seriously’ a lot.”

“Do you want my dark backstory?” Anise asks. “Should I make up a Catholic school where the nuns had a paddle with seriously carved into it?”

“Some of these references, boss, I get like fifty percent of.” Another laugh rumbles against her cheek. “I hope you crack yourself up.”

“I sure do.” Anise forces herself to loosen her grip a notch. “It’s just a word I say, I guess. A weird habit when I’m really caffeinated.”

“All respect, boss, I can’t remember seeing you any other way.” She hitches up on the reins. “How bout a question for question. Ask me something.”

“Can I ask you about the, uh, Trakor incident?”

“Ah. Yeah.” Dee sighs. “That was just a packmaster without control over his people.”

“I mean, you guys have seriously picked up the slack.” Anise adjusts her grip, tries those saddle handholds again. “We’re in fine shape without them. Better, even, from a payroll perspective. I just want to understand the disagreement.”

“Fear of pain is a terrible way to keep your pack in line. That’s all. It’s weakness pretending to be strength. I couldn’t work with him.” Dee half-turns and rests a hand on Anise’s knee. “I should say sorry for making you choose between us. That was unfair of me. Wouldn’t do it again.”

“His packmate spat on you, Dee. Called you a murderer.” Was he right? She bites that question back.

Dee shrugs. “Even so. You raise your hand to your pack in anger, that’s one thing. We’ve all fought. We’re orcs. If you mete it out as punishment, it’s another. Assign shitwork or demand an apology or even throw down one-on-one in a fair tussle. That’s all okay by me. Trying to square things up between us with the whipping post? Fuck that, if you’ll pardon my packtongue.” She squeezes Anise’s knee and puts her hands back on the reins. “About to go downhill a piece. Make sure you’re secure.”

Anise gives up on the saddle handholds and clings to the orc as Hammer picks up the pace, feels the muscles work in Dee’s midriff as she maintains her rock-solid balance. What’s it like, she wonders, to be as strong as Dee is? To command loyalty and respect so effortlessly? Anise knows how to do the parts of her job that involve planning and minutiae and sweating the details. But she’ll never come close to Dee’s way with people.

Trakor had more people than Voraag, and a longer resume, and their packmaster wasn’t the one who forced the issue. Choosing Dee’s pack that day was illogical and impulsive and she’s felt shorthanded ever since. But she’s not once regretted it.

Anise is trying her best to be a polite and gracious guest of this dimension, and not a snooty New Layth city mouse. But God, some of what these O-Dub fairfolk call “cities” have her turning up her internal nose.

Alstorum started off as a farmer’s market, if she’s remembering right, a big open-air trading post to sell off your crops and buy your fertilizer. In the centuries since, the place has grown out, not up. It’s a sea of one- and two-story lumberhomes and lean-tos, its glum citizens’ lowing livestock peering from pens. In the city core, where they’re headed, a cluster of stone and concrete municipal buildings present the scant exceptions. All the taxes seem to have flowed into a big fuck-off wall for the administration district and a vast flock of gargoyles for the City Basilica. They leer from every swooping corner of the temple’s exterior. Its vaulted interior is dominated by an alabaster statue of the Proud Father, monotheistic God of Periphanism.

Anise has some uncharitable thoughts about the Periphanists she’s met so far in the Old World, and indeed about any organized religion having such fabulous accoutrements when it’s surrounded by under-built shanties. But the administrator is letting them play inside it and the acoustics are just fabulous, so she keeps them to herself.

The audience pushes close; Alstorum is another majority halfling spot, and by some social or commercial contract the smallfolk take up the front third of the space.

Anise will never forget the first time she saw a halfling mosh pit. The height these little guys can get on their stage dives is obscene. This audience, she guesses, comes mostly from the upscale stone-built side of the wall. Fine silk cuts mix in with black leather and punk-rock Earth fashions. She laughs to herself as a guy in a billowy saffron robe under a ragged thrash metal tank top finds a spot by the railing.

Legendary’s members take their places one by one before the massive tapestries of the basilica altar, their rig’s fresnel lenses snapping on as each member retrieves their instrument in the looming shadow of the Proud Father’s gaunt frame. On stage right, Nick Voraag’s beaten-up Reeve Symphonic waits for him.

“What’s our attendance?” Nick asks Anise, as Evan ducks through the curtain to an approbative typhoon of applause.

“We’re at a little over ten thousand distributed.” She peers out from side-stage at the sea of fairfolk, stained a cabernet red by the colorful cathedral glass. “Looks about right. What’s the biggest crowd you’ve performed for?”

“One time I did a house show for about a hundred.” Nick accepts a clasp-to-fist-bump handshake from Kell, and then the drummer is out.

Anise’s stomach clenches. “Are you ready for this? You feel okay?”

He gives her a cocksure grin. “I feel Legendary.” Then he breaks the curtain, and Kell’s broadside drum assault begins.

Anise watches from her little shadowy corner. Nick Voraag doesn’t perform like he’s nervous to be in front of his largest crowd ever. Sion Benefice, his predecessor, stood still as a statue when he played. Nick struts, weaving around his wing of the stage like a man under the influence.

He’s not on Sion’s mathematically exact level, but she can see how his energetic garage-band swagger is threaded through with powerful technique. He stands by Evan, and the bassist gets the hint, turning into his space and rocking forward and back with him on Fossil Fuel’s bruiser verses. Thekla glances over at him during Commodity Credit, one of their danciest numbers, and Anise sees the grin on the goblin’s face.

Dee’s by Anise’s side, watching her packmate tear shit up onstage. Between songs, she leans down to Anise’s pointy ear. “Kinda wish he was still back here doing that just for us, huh?”

Anise tries to hide her admiration. “He’s doing okay.”

“On guitar…” Thekla juts her hand out to announce their fill-in lead. “Nicholas of the Voraag River Pack!”

Dee’s back straightens, eyes twinkling. “That’s fuckin’ right, he is,” she declares, mostly to herself.

To Anise’s surprise, her little golden fists close. What did we say about jealousy, Anise? She’s not a little kid. Of course, Dee looks at Nick like that. Why wouldn’t she? Because she called Anise’s legs nice? That was just a compliment. That’s how Old World orcs talk. And Nick’s out here deadlifting tree trunks and learning how to stand up in a rhino’s saddle and shredding like a guitar god. What’s the boss lady getting up to? Jumping rope behind the trailer and eating bagged salads and trying not to stress so hard she pulls her dull green hair out.

And being old. Old enough to be their mother. Old enough not to have these thoughts. You had your chances to live this kind of life and bag this kind of girl, Anise. You put away the hairspray and the spiked choker, and you went to go be a mom, and you raised a confident, smart kid with her shit together, and you manage a world-famous band. You are so incredibly lucky in so many ways. Stand in the background and watch them grow. This isn’t your scene any more. But you are who made this happen. This venue, this crowd, this tour. Take pride in this and be content.

When the tidal-wave applause washes over Legendary, she’s right there with it, clapping and whistling and cheering. And she feels pretty good.

About twenty minutes from now, when the deacon calls her and Dee into his office to obliterate her day, her tour, and possibly her career, she’ll look back on the Anise of right now and think: what a fucking moron.