Elements and Memory
I want to throw you.
I want you to know I know.
I want to know if you read me.
I want to swing with my eyes shut and see what I hit.
I want to know just how much you hate me so I can predict what you'll do.
I want you to know the wounds are self-inflicted.
I want a controlling interest.
I want to be somewhere beautiful when I die.
-Recoil, "Want"
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Gehrich had always thought that he liked them confident.
He could handle a smart mouth, years of tuning-out henchmen when he needed to had trained him for that, but Lenus's mouth was more like an open sewer, and she wasn't so much confident as the fact that she knew that they knew that they couldn't take her if their collective asses were on fire. She had a gap-toothed leer that made every man-jack of them fidget uncomfortably like his shirt was too tight and his crotch was in a vise, and that tickled her pink.
Later on, he figured that it all started to go to hell when that she came waltzing into the throne room, kicking Mappi in front of her like he was a hunchbacked welcome mat.
"Hey," she called out when she made her way up to the dais where Gehrich was struggling to haul himself into a more upright sitting position. "Old guy. You wanna make some money?"
And that was Lenus.
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He'd always figured that he'd like a girl that knew where she was going.
"You want to what?" he said, and tried not to feel like he was struggling to catch up.
She blew air out of her lips in an annoyed hiss, then gave him a bored look from where she was lounging on one of the spare Giganto chairs. The seat was wide enough for her to properly lounge on it, with her legs hooked over one of the arms while she sprawled with her arms behind her head on the seat proper. She looked perfectly comfortable, but there was no way that someone in armor like that could sit comfortably for long, he thought darkly. What wasn't thin leather was blue steel, and the metal plates on her chest were barely flexible enough to keep her breasts from spilling out.
He found himself becoming slightly dazed. Jeez, he thought fuzzily. Think those are padded? They've got to be.
When he snapped his eyes up to hers once again, he saw that she was baring her teeth at him in a leering grin, her hair falling in her eyes like razorblades. She stretched.
Once he'd gotten over her awful peal of laughter as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, she sat up properly folded her arms and tucked her chin in like a boxer. "We kidnap the princess, put her in a magical coma, lock her in a hidden, magic, sparklypoo labyrinth while I infiltrate the castle and make your group the richest sons of bitches on the continent."
He grunted.
They were in the treasure room, the only place that Gehrich could think of with both adequate security, and enough chairs. Sure, they were mostly dusty, Giganto-sized thrones made of the skulls of long-dead enemies, but it was the thought that counted.
Gehrich palmed his face with one hand, and looked up at her tiredly. I'm getting too old for this. "And you're somehow going to pass for a princess until the coronation."
She shrugged, and Gehrich tried to ignore what that did to her chest, "What can I say?" she said, smiling beautifully. "I've got class."
"At which point, the whole thing's going to fall apart," he finished flatly.
Lenus made a poof gesture with her narrow hands, and smiled beatifically. "Like a house of cards," she drawled.
Gehrich scratched his mustache, and looked up at her from under his brows. "At which point, what will you be doing?"
White teeth gleaming in a shark's smile as she purred, "I make off with the tasty bits of the royal treasury, and you guys can do whatever you want with the rest of Tiberoa." Her white eyebrows lanced down suddenly, "I heard you were some kind of ball-punching wizard. Why d'you carry a knife?"
"I like knives," he rumbled defensively.
"Really?" she said, rolling to a sitting position like her spine was made of melted butter. "Me too."
He noticed that she may have had a jaw like a horse, but her eyes were long-lashed and dusky, and her lips were pretty enough if you ignored the way her smile felt like a steel-toed kick in the junk. There was a glint there, and he didn't identify it at first until he realized that it was the shine of someone who was crazy in a way that mad dogs in the noonday sun only dream about.
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If you'd asked him about it before, Gehrich would have told you that he'd always fancied himself with a girl who could get things done.
They were waiting in the jumble of rocks on the cliff's edge, well above the royal hunting party as it meandered through the ancient river bed on the way to the grasslands.
"Look at her," growled Lenus, sweat staining her bandana a darker red, her eyes fixed on the target. "Riding ahead like she's the Queen of fuckin' Sheba."
"Makes it easier, don't it?" said Gehrich, sitting with his hands on his kneecaps in the shadow of a boulder.
Mappi was one shadow over, squinting flinchingly at Lenus every once in a while. She had him cowed. It hadn't taken much. Gehrich swore that he was going to invest in better henchmen the next time around. He yawned, "You gonna make it bolt, or are you just gonna stare at it 'till it bursts into flames?"
She shot him a withering glance, then strung the short bow she'd kept at her feet by propping it against a rock until she could loop it. "The thing about Runners," she grunted, "Is that they're awfully good at what they do, given the right provocation." She nocked an arrow, and narrowed her eyes down the shaft. "Heads or tails?"
Gehrich grumbled, then dug a coin out of his belt and flipped it. "Tails," he said, looking down at the back of his wrist.
She grinned, and the string buzzed as an arrow planted itself high in the hindquarters of the dun Runner that was carrying the Princess Emile. It squealed, deep-throated and terrible, and burst into a dead gallop that sent it hurtling through one of the side canyons. The Princess bent down over its neck, her mouth in one white, terrified line, and hauled on the reins with all her might, but the bit was evidently in its teeth, for it paid no attention.
"Cut the line," said Lenus between gritted teeth as her eyes followed the path of the Runner. "Cut the fucking line."
Gehrich sighed, pulled the knife out of its sheath and sawed through the rope running by his ankles in one slice. That set loose the trap, which sent about six thousand pounds of boulders crashing down behind the Princess, blocking the canyon and separating her from the rest of the party.
"Yes!" muttered Lenus, pumping her fist viciously. "Fuckin' pink, fluffy cunt, I bet her Daddy shits his pants over this, the fat pompous fuck."
Gehrich watched the Princess's progress down the canyon. The Runner's stride wasn't affected by the arrow much, it ran fast and clean over the uneven terrain, but it was still to the Princess's credit as a rider that she didn't fall off.
"She won't get far, boss," said one of his men by his elbow. "The canyon runs out a quarter of a mile down, and we've got a couple of guys waiting down there. We'll nab her."
"Good," grunted Gehrich. "Get on it." His men melted down from the cliff wall hurriedly, and he called after them, "And heal up the arrow wound, we don't want to give them any reason to suspect something when they finally catch up."
Lenus dropped her bow carelessly, and wormed out of her hiding spot until she was inches away from Gehrich's hip, her belly in the dust. She smiled sweetly up at him, her outburst forgotten. "Think she'll fall? Split her head open on a rock like watermelon?" Her voice lowered, "I used to love sucking on those seeds. I can spit 'em six feet, you know."
"Don't even think about it," he growled at her, his eyes narrowed. "She dies, and our little business venture falls apart at the seams."
She pouted. One of her milky-white hands snaked up and curled around his calf. Squeezed. "You don't want to get rid of little old me, do you?" she asked, her voice going syrupy. Her breasts bulged up out of her ridiculous armor, and he felt like hitting her.
"Let go of me," he said, jerking his leg out of her grasp. She smirked, and let go slowly, then propped her elbow on the ground with her chin in her hand.
"We've got plenty of time, you know, until they need to switch me in," she said, batting her eyes. "And you're so... muscley."
He looked down at her in disbelief, no small amount of disgust on his face. Does she realize what she even sounds like? "Is that how it works?" he said carefully. "When you aren't trying to kill something, you're off to fuck it?"
Her eyes narrowed, and her fingers tightened on her chin. Her upper lip drew up a little as she turned her head to the side a little and looked at him, long and hard. But then she smiled, sharp and nasty, and mouthed a kiss at him as she drew herself up into a crouch behind the rock.
"I never asked," he said, lounging back against the boulder. "The money, I get. The power, the influence, and that treasure you're gunning for, I understand that. What's the real reason you're doing this?"
He watched her, her white hair curling in the heat where she lay below him. Impossibly, the act drained out of her features, and it left her grey eyes hard as flint.
"True love," she said bluntly, her chin jutted out. "The likes of which you're never going to know about, you fucking asshole."
Suddenly, she was scrabbling up out of the dust and kicking sand in his face, ignoring her silhouette against the sky that could give them away to the royal hunting party. He swore, and brought an arm up to protect his eyes while he rolled out of the way and into a crouch behind a different boulder. His hand snaked towards his belt for his knife, but not before she had one of her needle-thin knives out and was on him, every long skinny inch of her pressed up against him as she shoved it up against his throat. Gehrich cursed himself for going for his knife when he'd been trained exclusively to go without one, but it was too late.
Her face was inches from his, and he was shockingly aware of every scrap of her skin that her armor didn't cover. He knew that she'd designed it that way, and it was all that he could do to keep his head clear.
"Which is something you're never going to understand about me," she breathed, her eyes fluttering down with mocking preciseness as she slivered the blade around his neck in a thin line of fire. "I'm bone-deep, head over heels in love, and that makes me the most dangerous woman in the world."
Gehrich coughed, stilled his hands at his sides, and ignored the rocks digging into his kidneys. "He somebody special, your man?" he said.
The smile dropped from her lips, and she snapped her teeth in his face, "He's my fucking world. But I will cut your fucking balls off right here and pull this whole circus off by my lonesome if I have to. So shut up and do your part, you cuntsucking, bottomfeeding fuck."
This woman is insane, he thought, quite clearly.
She smiled again, all razor sweetness, and slid up off of him and to her feet. "You're just lucky my man wants an army on my side when the time comes," she spat down at him. "Like I'll need it."
He could back out now, he knew. He could call the whole thing off, and keep her from killing him long enough to get away. She was crazy. Not crazy in a way that meant that they might actually pull this off, a shining crazy that could fool the whole world into going along for the ride. She was the kind of madness you'd find in bull-baiting dogs, who'd let themselves be pounded to death under the hooves of a huge creature just so long as they had a good hold on its nostrils first.
"What are you waiting for?" she asked suspiciously, her eyes mere slits. "You wanna go pick up the Princess and get your share of the profits, or should we just sit here and jack off some more?"
She swore like it was some kind of contest, and she was afraid of losing.
He felt his throat, and looked at the small smears of blood that came off on his fingertips. Fuck it, he thought. At least there's always the money.
Gehrich had always told himself that he'd go for a girl who spoke her mind.
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