Page 24 of Connor and the Dragons

“The wedding hasn’t happened yet.” Sky grabbed Moerrven’s enormous hand and swung it. “We’re trolgar-bonded, which is deeper than a wedding, but you try explaining a horn-binding to every person you meet. It’s easier to call him my husband. He pretty much is, anyway.”

Moerrven’s ears went blue, and he did not argue.

An orange cat padded over and sat in front of me and looked up with an expression of complete judgment. I crouched and scratched her between the ears, and Sky leaned down and introduced her as Poppy.

“Don’t worry, Vyranthos doesn’t particularly like cat meat,” I whispered to Poppy.

She did not look like she believed me, so I stood and moved to the far wall, where eight leather implements sat next to the bed, including a very skimpy pouch like the one the man had been wearing. I picked it up, running my fingers over it. Did one wear it so their lover could strip it off at their leisure and fuck them thoroughly?

I found I quite liked that idea.

“…every record the Order touches is enciphered. We’ve copied out three ledgers of it and it might as well be birdsong,” Sky was saying, and then something about archives, and Connor asked a practical question about frequency and page counts.

“How did you know to look here?” Connor asked.

“Most of our information comes from Kethilda, this librarian we met in Frostholm. One might call her a Liminal Order fangirl, and she’s the one who told us the theory about the portals moving over time. She firmly believes our portal is one from Liminia that has migrated.”

Moerrven nodded. “It is known that they move at a rate somewhat associated with the time differential between worlds. From her, we knew the portal once sat in Liminia, but not much else. Unfortunately, she did not warn us about the codes and ciphers, or we might have come prepared.”

“But you were able to get ledgers of their private records?” Connor asked.

“That’s our one big win,” Sky said, and even half-listening I could hear how proud he was. “Moerrven’s famous here. Not street-famous, library-famous. The head librarian at the Limin Athenaeum is a full-on fanboy, and it turns out he is also a Liminal archivist. He’s been letting us into his back rooms after hours, for the new book’s research. The hero is a Liminian wizard, obviously.”

“Into the back rooms of the Order’s own archive,” Connor said. “To copy their sealed records. And he just lets you?”

“Because to him it’s nothing, Con. The sealed ledgers are centuries old. Dusty inventories, dead men’s paperwork, records nobody has opened in generations. He thinks he’s indulging a novelist with a taste for atmosphere.” Sky paused. “He did give us one warning, though. If anyone ever tried to actually read the sealed writing, the wizards would KNOW.”

“Which is ridiculous,” Moerrven said, without looking up from his notes. “A sentence cannot see you.”

“Well I believe him,” Sky said. “It chilled me to the bone. This whole country is like that. I love it.”

“What do you think it’ll take to break the cipher?” Moerrven asked.

“We need to find words that repeat. Names are the best, places, important key words. Ciphers break on the words you can predict,” Connor said.

“Oh, we can absolutely get you that,” Sky said, glancing at Moerrven. “We’ve been drowning in Liminian society pages for over a week. Give us a couple of days, and we’ll get you a list.”

“And how does one get past the front rooms?” Kessrin asked, and they went off on a tangent about the Order’s tests, which I did not follow. I picked up a small leather paddle and turned it over in my hand, wondering what it was for. Punishment perhaps? Would it make my cock even harder than the pinching?

It was very difficult to focus on ciphers and codes when I was thinking about being spanked by Connor’s firm hand. Or Kessrin’s, I was certain Kessrin would be quite rigorous.

“Then step one is to try and decode this,” Connor was saying. “I will try all of the cipher methodologies I’ve studied, and perhaps I’ll land on something. If we’re going in undercover, we need all the information we can get.”

Everyone made serious noises, which was frankly rather boring when I’d just found a vial of oil that would make a nice, slick lubricant.

“Their headquarters is like a fucking BDSM club,” Sky said. “The front part is public and open to every kinkster in the city. We were able to look the part, with Moerrven as my pet, but to get into the back rooms, you need to do a demonstration of magical ability. Obviously, I can’t do that. No amount of sexy troll on a leash would get us past the magic tests.”

Moerrven sat through this recounting with his arms folded and his gaze fixed on the ceiling, and the tips of his ears went slowly blue.

I stood up.

“I volunteer to wear a leash,” I said.

Sky stared at me for a long moment, then nodded, lips twitching. “Yeah, that tracks.”

CHAPTER 10: OALLIAN

The lodging house was pure erotic torture. No one wanted to fuck, and all they did was talk puzzles and logic.