Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards (9 page)

“This is
Elis
. Perhaps you have noticed his size?” She wasn’t talking about the majority of his body and I must admit what stuck out from the bottom of his toga was impressive.

“And finally, this is Tam. He is an expert masseur.”

She clapped her hands and the men shuffled back out of the room.

This woman was seriously creeping me out. She treated her husbands as prize pets. If I tried that with either of my wives they’d feed me my testicles. What’s more, I’d help them.

“In Malevon culture the natural superiority of the female sex, especially in the magical arts, has long been acknowledged, but it does make our men compliant. I cannot tell you how good it is to meet a wizard like yourself who comes from a world where men still consider themselves to be leaders.” She lifted her toga over her head, throwing it into a corner and sat naked. “You are married to barbarian women. Would my Lord Wizard care to sample the pleasures a woman of truly superior intellect and refinement can deliver?”

Now let me say that as a piece of sculpture this woman was ace. Flawless skin, breasts that were full, but needed no support, and legs that went up forever. Unusually for me, she left me completely unmoved. Her husbands had seen to that.

I could taste the magic she was using to induce lust bounce off the shield I’d created between us. I wondered if she knew how to create a similar shield.

The thought is parent to the deed and I flooded her with the desire magic I’d been using unconsciously only a few hours before. Because I thought she might try to shield herself, I threw a ginormous amount of it at her.

She gasped as it hit her. Apparently she didn’t know how to make a shield. She oozed off the cushion onto the carpet beneath. Alisandra slid towards me, her hands outstretched in silent appeal. I stood up to avoid her and she clasped her hands onto my ankles.

“Please take me, Lord Wizard. Fill me with your seed.”

That would have really done it for me if circumstances were different, but I was cold as ice.

I shook a leg free. “I might consent if you were to tell me your plan.”

I saw her try to get control of the emotions flooding her. This woman was used to being in charge and proud of it. I ruthlessly applied more magical desire. It wasn’t quite mind control, but it had the same taste and I felt disgusted with myself even as I pushed it further.

Tears fell. Her hand got to my knee and I pulled it off me and flung her down at my feet.

“You were to marry me. You cannot possibly be doing this to me.”

“Barbarian wizard, falls hopelessly in love with you after the application of a little lust magic? How does it feel when I’m doing it to you?”

Alisandra writhed on the floor. Her tears had turned to hopeless sobs and her eyes were red. She couldn’t get her breathing under control. I remorselessly turned up the magical heat.

“Please, please stop it. I can’t think. It hurts.”

“Marrying me would not have given you control of me.”

She pulled herself together enough to snarl. “You fool. As my husband you would be disqualified from the Conference by conflict of interest. We would have won without having to kill you.”

I cut the magic off and she collapsed onto the floor.

[Jake, where are you? What is going on?]

“Just coming, Fluffy. You wouldn’t like it here. We’re leaving.”

[Why have you got me wrapped up in enough magic to protect a planet?]

Ignoring my friend’s questions I turned to Alisandra. “You are the least attractive woman I have ever met. I pity your husbands.”

While she absorbed that I shouted to my dragon. “I’ll be right out. I need to get the taste of these people from my mouth.”

I was expecting her attack. Sneakier than I used to be, I’d measured her reserves before I insulted her and she had nothing that compared to my power. Even so the strength of her attack surprised me.

Nevertheless I deflected it contemptuously, deliberately making no sign I had even noticed it.

“Bastard,” she shouted at my back.

People have said worse than that about me and she had reason.

9.
          
A Reckoning

Fluffy laughed so loud when I finished explaining what had happened to us that the couch burnt to a point beyond repair. At least I was able to protect the other furniture.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I complained when he finally calmed down. “They wanted to kill you and enslave me.”

[You do not see it at all, do you?]

“See what?”

Fluffy looked thoughtful. [Perhaps it is because you and Alisandra are of the same species. You see subtle differences as being major and completely miss the bigger picture.]

“I am not of the same species as that… creature.”

[Of course you are. Humanity is spread out across the multiverse as a small percentage of all living creatures hop under duress. There are millions of worlds similar to Earth out there with fossil records just as complete as yours. I thought you knew that? ]

He was right; otherwise ordinary creatures would hop across the multiverse if the situation was severe enough, like getting caught in a forest fire. There were tens of thousands of worlds essentially identical to Earth populated by all the creatures we were familiar with. But even if I had to admit that Alisandra was a human being, it wasn’t a laughing matter.

“I still don’t see the joke.”

[She is a female version of you, Jake. All your worst characteristics magnified a hundredfold.]

I considered hitting my dragon with a baseball bat. But he would probably just shrug it off as a pat if I did.

[Look at the facts. You both have multiple partners and are not above using magic to drive the opposite sex to fall at your feet. You are both obsessed with sex…]

“I am not obsessed with sex.” Well, not
all
the time.

Fluffy smiled. [She is not you, but she is what you might have been and what you might yet become.]

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, my friend.”

[I have faith that you will always do the right thing, eventually. Probably in the worst way it is possible to imagine.]

I laughed, because he had a point.

“I’m going back to Salice to talk to Esmeralda.”

[And people wonder what characteristics make you a hero.]

“She’s my wife and I love her every bit as much as Jenny.”

[Don’t forget to wash and change first. Otherwise she will smell the other women on you.]

“Are you coming with me?”

[Do I look stupid?]

“Anybody home?” My voice echoed through our royal apartments. I had showered and changed at my parents’ house before coming here.

“Jake, you’re home.” Esmeralda sounded strangely hesitant as she appeared from her bedroom, looking uncharacteristically timid. She pulled on one of the bell ropes before rushing towards me and putting her arms around me. “We need to talk.”

“That was supposed to be my line. Where’s Jenny?”

“She called Retnor and he came and took her away about half an hour ago. She is going to spend a couple of days in
Wales
with her parents.”

The sneaky orange reptile hadn’t told me he was planning to do that.

“I asked her to go, to give us a chance to talk things out. The King and Mother had severe words with me when they found out what I have been denying you.”

I kissed her lightly on her forehead. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” she said insistently. Taking my hand she led me towards her bedroom, closing and locking the door behind us. She pushed me onto an armless chair facing her bed and stood before me like a penitent child. Her hands fidgeted by her tummy as she prepared to speak.

“A good wife does not deny her husband on his wedding night and a princess marrying our country’s wizard champion has even less excuse. It is my responsibility to put the kingdom above everything else and I have been derelict in my duty. The King has instructed that you beat me severely to remind me that my role is to serve my kingdom, not to place it in jeopardy.”

I should have spoken, but the ability to speak had left my body. This was my Esmeralda speaking, and I would have sworn she would have rather died than deliver that speech.

She looked at the floor in front of me. “I hope that my Lord Wizard will see fit to bestow his love upon me,
three times in a row like he did with Jenny
, once he has satisfied himself with my chastisement.”

There was a bit of the woman I married in that statement, but I still couldn’t find the words to reply. Esmeralda took my silence as agreement with her proposals and began to strip. Watching her take her clothes off, made it even more difficult to find the appropriate words. She is so fit, my other wife, and so beautifully pregnant. That fierce pride she carries in her heart gives her skin a glow I cannot describe, except to say it makes her irresistible.

She walked demurely to the large marble mantelpiece and retrieved the hairbrush her mother had given me as a wedding present. It was an old flat wooden brush that had been polished on the backsides of hundreds of young female apprentices of the previous Grimaldis. Apparently, the King had also used it on his daughter when she was a child.

Esmeralda handed me the brush.

“Would my Lord prefer me to bend over his lap or over the bed?”

I gulped and finally found where my vocal chords were hiding.

“Neither,” I threw the brush across the room. “My wife is forgiven. Let us start our marriage afresh from this moment and let what has happened in the past stay there.”

She gave me one of those suspicious looks I dread and her hands slipped to her hips.

“And has my Lord Wizard something he wishes to bury in the recent past?” Sometimes I swear that girl can read my mind. It isn’t fair.

I opened my right hand and the brush flew back into it.

She placed herself over my lap so quickly I nearly fell off the chair. “Do it then, if it assuages your conscience.”

It was tempting. Her cheeks lifted up as though they wanted it. I reminded myself severely that I don’t hit women.

“For God’s sake, Esmeralda, I’ve had a rough day.” I pushed her off my knee and somehow she managed to fall gracefully. I wonder if that’s something they teach princesses at school. Rather than get up, she turned to face me resting on one arm with her legs slightly splayed. If we didn’t resolve this thing soon my balls were going to ache for days.

“And what or who has my Lord been up to today?”

“This morning a Knight of Justice tried to kill me in a farmer’s field and this afternoon the Representative from Malevon tried to add me to her harem.”

A steely glint appeared in Esmeralda’s eye. “And just how far did this Malevon bitch get?”

I looked her straight in the eye and replied with complete honesty. “Nowhere, I turned her lust magic back on her and left her defeated and weeping.”

Esmeralda smiled. “Does my Lord Wizard Husband want to beat me now, even though he was lying about the Knight?”

That is so Esmeralda. She knows a lot about magic and other worlds and can’t resist a final dig at me even as she acquiesces. I smirked at her.

“Did so, too. Fluffy says it’s the first time one of them has ever been defeated.”

Somehow in the space of a heartbeat, Esmeralda was on my knee, clinging tightly. “You could have been killed, with me not having forgiven you and Jenny three ahead.”

No, I don’t understand my women. I just accept that I love them.

“Can’t we just go to bed?” I may have put on a pleading hang-dog look.

A finger played with my hair. “The King will be upset with you for not beating me.”

“Maybe later, if you are very good.”

“I am always very good,” Esmeralda growled as she got to her feet and dragged me to her bed. When I put my hand on her tummy our baby drummed his approval through her flesh.