The Mask of Omegon (Gwen Farris Book 6) Page 8

  “That would be… Very different, wouldn’t it? Do you think I can do it?”

  The idea was clear in how he said the words. The guy wasn’t asking if she thought he’d be allowed to go and work. As a Baron he’d be certain to get in on the crew by asking. Even if him being there cost the company money in the long run. What he wanted to know was if he could, physically, pull the job off.

  Gwen nodded. He seemed to be in decent condition, actually.

  “It will be hard. You’ll be bored, sore and short on sleep at times. Still, you can do it. More to the point, Tomas Moore can. We’ll need to hide who you are, of course.”

  There was a slow nod then.

  “To preserve the family name? I can see that. Particularly if I fail miserably at it.” He sounded so earnest that it almost hurt to listen to.

  He was also wrong.

  “You’d think, right? No. We have to hide who you are so that the crew won’t freak out and try to do all the work for you. That would be worse than not having you along. I’ll set that up. Can you get away? You work as a legal clerk during the day?” That suddenly seemed unlikely, but he had mentioned being a bit strange.

  Tomas shook his head though.

  “I… Rather invented that part.” His voice shifted then, becoming deeper, and different. The Baron on the telestator. “Tomas Moore? A fine fellow, or so I’ve heard! Wonderful hands on that boy. Great for stroking…” He stopped, and sucked his lips in. Seeming mischievous.

  Gwen got it for once. They’d actually done that one after all. She wasn’t very good at it, but he’d been pleased enough at her efforts, she thought. Not that there wasn’t room for improvement there.

  Then he shifted, to his boss at work. A man that didn’t exist at all.

  “Several weeks off? To go fly around and waste his time? Certainly! We don’t really need him here anyway. Why, have him take a few months. We’ll just send his pay envelope along each week. Never a problem!”

  Gwen nodded, then stuck her tongue out. It didn’t really translate, but the man at least got she was responding to him.

  “Dang. You really do go all in, don’t you? Well, do that as a loader and you’ll fit in. Then, after a run or two, we leak to the press who you really are. How you’re helping the economy along with your own efforts, before going in for special training and military work. The trick will be getting you in someplace I can visit each night. That means getting your own room. That or being understanding when your roommate joins us. That sounds awkward, though.” She meant it, but had seen a lot of porn in her life. She’d just never considered herself as being part of that kind of thing.

  Not that she really was at the moment either. Having a boyfriend was novel enough for her really. She didn’t have to load in ten other guys on top of that. Which was a relief to know about herself. She’d always kind of figured that if she liked sex she’d go crazy with it, seeking to do nothing else. It was fun and a thing she wanted more of, but a lot of that was about the closeness to someone else. Gwen would have been nearly as happy getting regular hugs.

  Not that doing other things was bad at all.

  Tom stood up then, pacing a bit.

  “Let’s try that? I’ve been a bit at loose ends for a while. The next Omegon book won’t be going out for two months, but the work is done on it. Things are a bit slow, socially, given the war going on. People seem to think it a little crass to hold grand parties while others die and suffer in camps.”

  That got her to stand up, nodding.

  “On that line, I’m going to go and see about some things. Is it all right for me to come back here? I can call first. On the telestator? I’ll need the code for that.” If she didn’t have it in her notes.

  Scrambling, Tomas moved to find a real calling card for her. This one proclaimed him as being a Baron and everything. Not an artist at all.

  “This will do the job. I have a secretary that will know where I am. Why would you need to contact me first? I’m almost always here. Unless I sneak out to play in the cave. I mentioned the part where I’m a bit strange, didn’t I?”

  She snorted hard enough that it hurt a bit.

  “Um, so that if you’re doing some other woman I won’t pop in on you suddenly? You aren’t married, so… Your girlfriend? You don’t get a mistress until you get hitched, right? That’s a rule. I think.”

  He scratched his nose, hiding a smile at the same time. A bit obviously, but at least he was trying.

  “That’s a vote of confidence, isn’t it? I barely even know any women other than you. I can assure you they aren’t decorating my bed with any regularity. Really, it’s only been you… And Regina. Which was a mistake. If I’d had more experience, then I probably wouldn’t have been as entranced with her. Do you… Have many men friends?”

  “Nope. I’m still a virgin. I mean, me, Gwen. Everything that I’ve ever done has been with you, except a few kisses. That was all Duke Aubrey. We used to be engaged. That fell through when I went missing for three years. He got married. I hear she’s nice?” From several sources. Including Christoph.

  Her boyfriend grimaced a bit at the news.

  “Um, not to be indiscreet, but…” He blushed, a bright red color that had to mean he was close to passing out.

  She didn’t get it at all.

  Interestingly, the voice in her head did.

  ~He wants to know if you have any girlfriends. A bit cheeky of him, asking about that so soon. Still, there is that wonderful comic with us in it. Really, Gwen, you should give it a try sometime. There’s a certain naughtiness to it all. I’ll be quiet now. I hope this doesn’t ruin my reward time? It’s a bit of a breach of the rules, but I actually like this one. You should try to keep him. At least for a while.~

  Then the voice went silent. There were rules about Katherine not taking over, but nothing about her speaking like that, Gwen realized. She almost never did, though it was obvious she was trying to be helpful. Probably to get more rewarding pleasure. It had kind of worked the other night, after all. She’d swallowed, which had gotten her a full hour.

  Instead of being punished for taking over. That was probably horrible training for both of them. Gwen needed to learn how to do things for herself. Quickly too, or her new friend would get bored.

  “I don’t have any girlfriends either, rumors aside. Not that I couldn’t try that out. I haven’t done much, you know? I… That’s my deep dark secret. The thing that even though I tell people, the press has covered up for me.” She stopped as normal color tried to return to Tom’s face.

  “What’s that then?” The words were simple enough. Plain and almost relieved. Not even asking if she used to be a man, which would have been her go to question, if the roles were reversed. Though it was clear she wasn’t one now, which might be all that counted to him.

  It was hard to know.

  “I was born deformed. Crippled. Vastly so. Enough that in my own world random people would call me names, sometimes attacking me. I was small. Like a midget, or dwarf.” Holding a hand out she gave an idea of her former size. “The left half of my body was shrunken and distorted. The right half was bigger, but lumpy in places. I know that it doesn’t seem like it now, but that shaped who and what I am. I’d never had a kiss in my entire life, before coming here. Rarely a hug, even from my supposed family. So everything that way is new to me. Completely. Katherine did some freaky stuff, but that wasn’t me. Not that I blame her really. It’s fun.” She grinned a bit then, but knew that she’d seem worried at the same time. Admitting what she’d been born as was a risk, after all.

  The man next to her just held her then. It was a warm thing. Close and nearly caring.

  “You poor thing. That must have been so hard. Things can be better than that. I know they can.” There was a kiss to go along with the words. She still wasn’t doing it right, which got her to laugh when he pulled back.

  “Like that. I don’t know how to do anything, really. I was thinking I’d try some lessons? I have a
friend that does that kind of thing. For noble kids? I’d never considered it for myself. That might be awkward.” Carla wasn’t bright really.

  Not around either. The woman was off, working for the Westmorlands as chance would have it. When she wasn’t helping kids learn the ropes from a woman that didn’t work in a whore house directly. That was considered a bit less risqué. Especially for the girls. How that was done, Gwen didn’t really know. Carla didn’t strike her as the kind to lean too hard on text books for instruction.

  Rather than agree or disagree with her plans, Tom just nodded.

  “We have things to get to then? I should contact my legal team. Nothing pressing should come up, but if I’m to be gone for several months, working and training, I need to set some things in motion. How long do I have?”

  She didn’t know for certain, but thought for a bit and guessed. Then shortened the time by a bit. Groundling had suggested four days. That was probably the time they were actually going to be leaving at, not when the work had to be done.

  “Three days? We need to be ready earlier, rather than later. Get as much sleep as you can now, since it can be hard to get when loading or unloading. Working for a full day at a time isn’t unheard of. So if you need drugs for that, to keep you alert, get them before you leave.” It was a plan, actually.

  They had things like that, which for some reason had never been made illegal. They also had people that abused them. They tended to be a lot cheaper than back home though, so it didn’t lead to a lot of crime or ruined lives. Even drinking didn’t, since almost no one ran cars. Lorries, there. Running the world off of magic saved a lot of problems that way.

  Leaning in, she hugged her new friend again, then let go and left, teleporting away. Not to her hotel room, which she decided to leave the next morning anyway. No, she went to Westmorland Central. That way she could get with some people about a training program.

  It was a bit late and no one she knew well that could help her with the pleasure device was around. Not at first. In the end she had to knock on a personal room door, to roust the one person that she knew for certain would be able to help her. Other than Beth. Her friend would have, even in the middle of the night, but she was being given a lot of rest. Besides, she lived in a different part of the compound. One that wasn’t actually part of the base itself, being a nice house outside the wall. With her husband. Martin Cordell.

  The ex-anti-Westmorland hate group leader.

  It was a change up, to say the least. He was doing pretty well, Gwen had heard, since he, and James her old driver, had gone into business together. Making a new style of running shoes. They were already popular enough that she’d seen people wearing them on the street. Mainly kids, but they were superior in fit and comfort to everything else you could get on the market there.

  She had a pair of her own, in lady’s pink, for runs. Which she needed to get to soon. She’d cut back a bit on her exercises. Doing enough to stay in shape, but not so much that she couldn’t gain some weight. That had been surprisingly hard for her to manage however.

  The door opened, with Adam Westmorland sticking his head out. He was in a long night shirt, one that screamed that he was in a black and white movie to her. His face didn’t look happy to see her, at first. After a moment he shook his white haired head and smirked.

  “There was a time when a young woman knocking at my door at this hour wouldn’t have gotten a scowl at all. Now I just have to wonder at it happening. Is there an issue? An emergency?” He sounded almost kind, which had to be the sleepiness talking.

  The man hated her after all. For all he was probably one of her top ten best friends in the world.

  “I can’t have come just to visit?” She hadn’t, of course. Which he knew, instinctively.

  “That doesn’t seem likely. So?”

  “Right. I need to have someone run the pleasure device for me? Everyone else I know that can run it is gone. Also I need to go over a training program. For Baron Tomas Harrison? So we need to not use the standard protocols, but we still need something that will work. He’s planning to enlist in the military. Strong magic user though and in decent physical shape, which can’t hurt.” Then she shrugged, not trying to show what it meant with a hand flip. “Also, it occurred to me that I should be helping get POWs back. Um, prisoners of war? I can teletransport them out, if I can get enough information on them? Names and…”

  The man blinked at her, then sneered. For once it didn’t seem to be about her at least.

  “That… We have a few others that would be best utilized doing that as well. That I never even considered it… Gah. I’ll start that up in the morning. I have to run it past the king first, of course, but I doubt it will be an issue. What do you have in mind for the Baron? That might be difficult for our trainers. Addicting him to pleasure isn’t…”

  He stopped, since she was shaking her head.

  “We can’t do that. Of course. No, we need to use a combination of milder things to help. Low level pleasure that’s really nice, but isn’t totally addictive. Low level discomfort that won’t be torture. Just not fun. Then, actually, we can use close to the normal protocols. It won’t be as effective, but enough to make it worth doing, if we aren’t pushing him to do things that are nearly impossible. I don’t know his strengths, magically speaking. Though something like field healing might be useful?”

  Everyone had that as their strongest power after all. Healing. Even Gwen did, though she’d never learned how to do any of it. Most didn’t, which to her mind said something about how people really were.

  “I want in on that one too, if possible? Also fighting, since it could come up. I want something… Um, kingdom side for him? In the military? In war that can’t always be guaranteed, so…”

  She didn’t explain why she wanted that for him.

  Then, with Adam Westmorland, she didn’t need to. Tomas was a noble, so he kind of loved him. Automatically. It had literally been tortured into him, after all. Into all of them.

  “We can do all of that. Come along then, Miss Farris. I’ll hook you up to your wicked box, then we can plan things out more carefully. Yes. This way?”

  The man got slippers, but no real clothing and led her away at a decently fast walk.

  Chapter six

  The next morning, at what was likely a decent enough hour, Gwen decided to check out of the hotel she was in. The man that was at the front desk was pleasant, smiling at her with only a bit of strain on his face. She didn’t exactly understand why. Not at first.

  Really, she figured it was the obvious thing. That he’d realized who she was. The traitor that had sold out everyone in the worst way imaginable. Except that when he spoke about it, after the cash had changed hands, which came to four mets for the entire time she’d been there, the guy seemed a little worried about something.

  “Miss Farris?” He was looking at the ledger, where she’d signed her name.

  “Yes?”

  The poor guy, who seemed to be in his forties or so made a tight face then. One that seemed almost ready to produce tears. The men there didn’t do that in public. They hadn’t back home either, but here the very idea would literally have had most adults turning their backs at that point. Even if they didn’t understand the reason behind it.

  “I fear that I have wronged you.” There was a deep shuddering breath.

  Suspicious she watched him for a second, then forced a small smile.

  “How so? Did you over-charge me? I have to say, it was a nice room for a met per night. I’ve had worse for a higher price.” Which was the plain truth. Meals weren’t provided, though they did have a restaurant there. She hadn’t eaten at it, however. That was just her using common Gwen sense. That was like regular common sense, only after being filtered through the fact that she knew, intuitively, that a whole lot of people had to have it out for her.

  At least the man hadn’t been jacking off into her soup. There were other things that could have been done, but none of them s
eemed like the guy would apologize for them. Taking money from her was the main one. That, or peeking at her when she showered. The thought got a very slight prescient hit. Enough that she noticed it being there, but light so that she had to figure that something pretty big was wrong with the concept.

  “No. I… I noticed that you’d signed in as Gwen Farris. So I figured that letting some newsies know about it might make me a few extra mets. Except that the one that I called in took liberties and spied on you. They… Saw you, doing things with a young man? I tried to get them to stop, but… There are pictures.” The last bit was hissed.

  “I see. Well, that could be pretty bad then. How about this. You hand over some names and I’ll try to make sure that nothing comes back on you here? That isn’t a great way to make friends, by the way. Selling me out like that. Then, it isn’t like we’re close, is it?” Honestly it wasn’t that big of a deal. To her. The big issue would be that one of the people in the picture might be identified as Baron Harrison. Which honestly might solve the problem instantly. Even newsies didn’t often tempt the wrath of the nobles in the Western Kingdom.

  “It’s Stev Hess, Miss.” That got downcast eyes pretty quickly. She didn’t understand why that was, however.

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “From The Scan? It’s a horrible rag, but…”

  She got it then, having read an issue herself. It was all gossip, but tended to be fairly accurate. At least for the things that she was close enough to have inside information about. So if they said she was sucking off strange men in her hotel room, then it would be believed. Gwen had been, so to her it just seemed a bit embarrassing. It was the impact on others that would be the problem.

  “Ah. No problem then. I’ll handle it. Thanks for telling me, by the way. If anyone asks about this in the future, please send them to me first? It shouldn’t be a big problem. This time.”

  Not that she knew that, but she was good at faking confidence. It had gotten her out of more than one fight in her time. People looked at her, heard her saying she was willing to fight them, three or more at a time and worked out that she must have had a weapon on her.