Penny

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

HOw are we doing team?

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Cool air rushed in to fill Sabatine’s hard suit as she wrenched her helmet off. The airlock hadn’t yet come to full pressure and the partial vaucumn plucked at her sinuses. The sweat that slicked her body immediately chilled and became clammy, but it was a blessed relief compared to the heat she had generated in nearly two full watches on the hull. The rest of the crew were doing the same, faces red and flushed from hours of heavy labor in zero-g. Cockburn, a landsman groaned and cradled his arm where a parting line had stuck it. It was probably broken, but he was lucky enough not to have lost it when the woven beryllium monocyrstal was suddenly pulled beyond its tensile strength. A few hours in the autodoc would see him healed enough for light duty.

Kaiden’s plan called for the K-21 to be re-rigged and several of her masts stepped to new rings beside. It was a huge undertaking without a dock yard, and only possible at all because they had stripped every spare sail and cable from the Whitehall. That hadn’t pleased Rachet, but he had grudgingly complied. It had pleased the sallow faced lieutenant even less when Kaiden had taken nearly two thirds of his crew, a third to help Sabatine with the repairs to K-21 and the other third to reinforce the Vickie for the next phase of the operation. Even if everything went completely according to plan, all three ships were going to be running with near skeleton crews if and when they got into action with the Alliance. To Sabatine’s personal annoyance, Kadien had left her with a grand total of two petty officers, Klave the Bosun’s mate, and Creavy the Whitehall’s chief engineer. The rest of her crew consisted of six riggers and a score of landsmen who didn’t know a cable splice from their assholes. All the experience spacers were doing yeoman’s work to stop the clumsy landsmen from killing themselves, or worse.

“You should get some sleep ma’am,” Klave suggested as they sucked in lungfuls of reprocessed air.

“I can sleep when I’m dead,” Sabatine responded, her mind running through the next hour and the myriad tasks she needed to accomplish.

“Begging your pardon ma’am, but we might be all be dead if the Alliance jumps in here and you are too exhausted to function. You are the only astrogater we have on board. Sabatine rubbed her eyes with her balled fist. The shortage of astrogaters was a real problem. Kaiden had taken Lieutenant Rachet with him for the next stage of the plan but she wasn’t all together sure that had been the right decision.

“Right,” Sabtine responded noncommittally, “good thought.” The airlock came to pressure and one of the landsmen, Gautso?, spun the dogs and opened the door. Sabatine made a gesture to the man helping half carrying Cockburn to enter first, and he lugged his moaning mate out of the lock. Sabatine followed along till they reached the autodock. The destroyer had a larger unit than the Vickie did, with four independent pods. Sabatine helped Cockburn into the first pod and closed it with a hiss, then finished stripping off her suit and climbed into another. It sealed around her with a crackle and she felt the spray of antistetic preparatory to the placement of IV access. Twenty minutes later she awoke as the pod opened, feeling much better now that the machine had purged her blood stream of metabolites and toxins built up from too much work and not enough sleep. It was an old academy trick, the kind that would get you running laps with a hundred kilo pack if the instructors ever caught you. She stopped by her cabin for a change of clothes and a restorative tot of brandy before heading down to the power room to see how Creavy was getting on with the ships internal systems. After that, if all went well, she could squeeze in two hours sleep before she needed to be back out on the hull.

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

@PerfectThought Thank you for your kind words! You are welcome to submit a charcter sheet but there are a number of other people who are on the waiting list.

De Trop Disgrace: Warhammer Fantasy RP

Emmaline bit back a scream of frustration as she realized she had just collided with the boorish bastard from the ball. All she had needed to do was get to her rooms and she could have gathered up her gold and been out of town before anyone discovered Oderick's body. There would have been time for her to get away in the confusion, while people wondered if she had been abducted for ransom or murdered alongside her beau. Now that Kasimir had seen her suspicion would immediately fall on the foreigner even before she reached the gates of the Ulricberg. Briefly she considered killing Kasimir. The thought made her queasy. She was many things, but she wasn't the sort to murder someone just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She only had one card to play.

"Murder!" she screamed at a shattering volume that shook dust from the ceiling.

"Sieur Oderick has been mirdered!" she howled, "helep! Zanyone!"

Doors flew open as guests stumbled from their quarters. After a moment the shout was taken up by another throat, then another. Within moments, two heavy set men in the Count's livery were forcing there way through the increasingly crowded hallway. Eleanor threw herself into the arms of the nearest weeping hysterically. The second man shoved passed disappearing down the hallway and into Oderick's rooms. A minute later he returned clutching Kasimir's bloody sword. Emmaline didn't hear where the voice called from, but someone shouted Kasimir's name, the guard who had been holding her shoved her aside and drew his weapon as several armed men converged on the luckless nobleman.

Pirates - Ye Be Warned

"Easy all," Jess cried as the boat neared the white spit of sand. The boat crew lifted their oars skyward and allowed the little craft to coast into a soft crunch against the sand. Jess hopped over the side, taking the coil of painter cable over her shoulder as she splashed through the thigh deep water and up onto the beach. The sand was soft and very white, idyllic in all respects. The jungle beyond was a brilliant green and echoed with bird calls and the chittering of less identifiable creatures. Jess trudged up the beach and looped the cable around the trunk of a tree that looked like a palm, save for odd discolored diamond patterns in its bark.

"Do you have a plan here or is it just a 'look for treasure' type thing," Galt asked, having stayed on the boat until the crew pulled it ashore to avoid getting his feet wet. Jess made a gesture with her head to the small peak that formed the central spire of the island, its crest peeking out through the lush jungle.

"The crew will look for fresh water, while you and I will head inland and try to climb that peak, hopefully I can get some sense of where we are from the top," she explained. Her tone wasn't hopeful, Shimmersea was a strange place and only a tiny portion of it had been mapped, an even smaller portion of it reliably.

"And we kind of take look for treasure as a given in this outfit," she concluded.

Pax Astra

The assault boat roared away from the farm burning farmstead at several hundred kilometers per hour, driven onwards by its trio of ion thrusters at full output. There was no need for such haste, but aggressively pushing an advantage was beaten into legionaries from the earliest days of basic training. Sabatine flew a nape of the earth pattern, also completely unnecessary given the lack of any anti-aircraft capabilities beyond rifles. Her face, illuminated by the holographic HUD being projected onto it, seemed to shift, the farmer retreating to be replaced by an older and harder visage. Within moments Cereys was gone, replaced by Athena.

"Thirty seconds to target," Sabatine reported mechanically. Tiber had already left the gunnery station and was readying his personal weapons, snugging pouches and equipment in a familiar, if lately unpracticed, routine. The assault boat screamed in over the village, shattering windows with its down draft as Sabatine executed a stomach churning turn before setting down in the town square. The approach was deliberately too fast, prompting the chemical boosters to fire to slow the decent at the last moment. The old assault landing trick blasted grit and gravel out in all directions like a fragmentation warhead a moment before the boat crunched down on its skids. Sabatine slapped the hatch release and the rear landing hatch crashed to the ground bringing with it a could of dust that mingled with the bleach smell of the cleaning products they had used to get rid of the marine life. She stood up and took her gladius, racking the mechanism to ensure a fresh round was chambered and ready to go. Tiber was already down the ramp, his helmet on and visor down against the dust. Sabatine followed, feeling the tingle of ions from the engines arcing little sparks of heat lightning in the dust. The ramp retracted and sealed. Normally, an assault boat of this type would be defended from enemy infantry by a quartet of 3mm hypersonic gatling guns, but even the remarkable resilience of the craft hadn't spared ammunition in exterior pods from the ruinous effects of sea water. Sabatine doubted it would be a problem, the locals lacking the ordnance or time to force their way into the craft. If the did manage it, well they would burn that bridge when they got to it.

Tiber was already striding towards their target a large pilastered building which had once been a library but now served as Chieftain Gorm's treasure house. Two guards, slovenly dressed thugs with shotguns, were shielding their eyes from the downdraft when Tiber came out of the dust at a fast walk.

"Hey! What are you..." the first one asked, spitting a cigarette from his lips as his eyes widened. Tiber shot him twice, once in the chest, and once in the face in a classic spec ops doubletap. The second guard's eyes bulged a moment before his face exploded from Tiber's third round. He didn't bother with the doubletap this time. Both men were dead before the cigarette hit the ground. He slung his weapon and grabbed the door of the library. Uncharacteristically it was locked, more effort than the local thugs were usually capable of. Somewhere an alarm siren began to blare. Tiber stepped back, racked his weapon and fired. A brilliant bottle shaped blast blossomed from an underslung attachment of some sort and the door, wood veneer around a steel core, flew from its hinges with a scream of warping metal. He had neutralized the guards and breached the door within the few seconds it took Sabatine to catch up, her weapon questing across a landscape now devoid of targets.

"Clear," Tiber reported, sliding the nearly full magazine from his weapon and replacing it with a fresh one.

"Copy that," Sabatine reported, moving through the door with her helmet set to a thirty percent mask of thermal. There were no heat signatures beyond the cooling bodies of guards and their smoldering cigarette butts. The interior of the library was a mess of crates and boxes. Looted artwork, boxes of credit chips, statuary, the assembled loot of decades of drug dealing, prostitution, racketing and other crimes for which there were no names. Sabatine grabbed a hover dolly stacked with jewelry and credit chips and powered it up. For a wonder the mechanism worked and she began to haul the thing back towards the assault boat. Tiber started opening boxes, making a quick inventory of what was most portable and most valuable.

By the time the first thugs arrived, they had made a respectable dent in the loot, piling boxes and crates into troop compartment of the assault boat. Sabatine was tossing a sack of jewelry into the hatch when the first gunshots sparkled off the hull. A group of thugs, apparently the hangers on Gorm kept around as a personal guard, were fanned out across the street, the wiser ones taking cover behind dumpsters and ground cars. Others, often with eyes dilated by whatever drugs had gotten them out of their customary drunken stupors, stood in the open, rocking uneasily.

"Time to go!" Sabatine called to Tiber who was muscling the hover dolly through the shattered doorway. She ducked behind the landing strut and fired twice, dropping one of the drug addled goons in a spray of blood. A vehicle was making its way down the street. The thing had started out as an earth mover with a heavy steel blade, but had been augmented with welded sheets of steel and a trio of pintle mounted automatic slug throwers into an improvised armored car. It chuffed out diesel fumes as it came, brushing stalls of timber and canvas into ruin as it moved too close to the curb. Loud hailers mounted on the cab crackled to staticky life.

"Drop your weapons and I promise to kill you quick," a gravely voice, made worse by static, snarled. Sabatine had never met Chieftan Gorm, but she would have bet her last sesterce that he was the speaker. As if to punctuated the pronouncement, all three automatics opened up in a defeaning roar, kicking up tracks of dust and sparkling ricochets off the hull of the assault boat. Tiber shoved the hover dolly along at a run and then leaped aboard it, the frictionless antigrav gliding across the open space between the library and the assault boat. Bullets struck the boxes around him as he crouched in cover, spraying the street with credit chips and precious gems. The dolly sailed across the street and up the ramp with the precision of a pool ball being slotted home by a master.

"Very well since you choose to die..." the voice snarled. Sabatine pulled a stubby metal cylinder with a blue band around the top and struck the igniter live against the landing strut.

"Ave imperatrix! she shouted, and then tossed the cylinder through the open door into the library. It was doubtful Gorm or his thugs saw the missile in the dust and gunfire but its effect was unmistakable. The plasma grenade was a separated solution of liquid crystal compounds that fused together into a solid microseconds before smaller explosive charges compressed the newly formed lattice in a psudeo-nuclear explosion. There was a flash of bright blue light that was visible even through the stone wall, literally stunning to the untrained. The cerulean fireball ripped through the library like a devouring star. The walls survived long enough to channel the blast upwards before they shattered outwards in an exploding wall of debris. Sabatine was already halfway up the ramp when the concussion knocked her from her feet, driving her up the ramp and slamming her into a bulkhead with force enough to cripple an unarmored man. As it was her armor drove into her at half a dozen points hard enough to leave bruises in the days to come. Behind her the library and loot of Chieftan Gorm was a foretaste of Hades. At the temperature of crystal plasma everything burned. There was no orange, wood and other organics vaporizing in a heart beat, but rather the brilliant white of blazing sandstone, highlighted by the gorgoues red and green of burning metals. Several of the thugs that had been in the street fled burning, their clothing ignited by the terrifying intensity of the blast. Everything Gorm had worked for was gone in a heartbeat, his empire bankrupted, his hold over his men gone. After a debacle like this, he was unlikely to live out the week.

The heat beat at Sabatine like a hammer for the few seconds it took the powerful hydraulics to snap the landing hatch closed. Tiber grabbed her by the shoulder and half carried, half through her over the mess of boxes and crates into the pilots compartment. She cursed and groaned as she stumbled into the pilot's seat. She slapped a preplanned take off sequence and the chemical lifters roared, flaring the blaze behind them deep into the blue spectrum as oxygen was supplied at the pressure of a jet stream. The assault boat leaped skyward, jolting again as the ion thrusters lit, blasting them skyward away from the inferno below. Tiber was in the gunnery station but they were already beyond effective line of site of the settlement, though the glow of fires spreading from the library could be seen on the horizon.

"Going up," Sabatine said, lifting her visor to accept the projection of the HUD and angling the assault boat up and towards open space beyond.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

"Sayeeda makes all the decisions, I suppose that is true to type," Miranda observed smarmily picking at her food. Madge had subsided under the combined glare of most of the adults and didn't seem willing to press her luck any further. Junebug continued to eat, clearly making an effort to slow her pace to something that might be considered civilized. Her normal custom was to shovel food into her mouth as fast as possible, a practice learned via eating on the move and made worse by the demands of Terran bio-augments which sharply increased her metabolism.

"We are co-owners of the Highlander," Sayeeda clarified, "but in battle there can only be one Captain... and her hot pilot boyfriend." Taya sprayed a mouthful of water out of her nose, shocked by the uncharacteristic outburst. Miranda flushed and Brahm and Farah both chuckled, somewhat reluctantly in the laters case. Conversation turned to more local matters, accounts of what this or that acquaintance had been up to since last she visited. Sayeeda reacted only when directly questioned, merely nodding along in a disingenuous counterfeit of interest.

Finally dinner broke up and the robotic servant began to clear up. Madge was off like a shot, vanishing into the hedge ahead of the chiding calls of her parents. Sayeeda beckoned Neil over and headed out through a side door and down the hall to a spacious room. She pushed the door open and grinned.

"They still haven't changed it," she reported, her tone leaving her opinion of this uncertain. The inside of the room was plain, spared from being spartan by a variety of sporting trophies and a number of model starships against one wall. A writing desk with an integral console sat in dusty disuse and a comfortable and neatly made bed was against a wall looking out over a balcony that overlooked the neatly landscaped ground. Junebug crossed to the bed and bend down, rummaging beneath it. She came out with a battered military helmet with a polarized face plate and a silver flask. She unscrewed the cap and took a drink.

"What do you think of the old billet?" she asked, flopping back onto the bed, cradling the helmet under one arm.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Conversation as interrupted as the same robotic servant that had unloaded the luggage entered bearing platters of food which it laid carefully on the table. Tomaz excused himself and returned a minute later with Madge, the girl having been somewhat cleaned but still with a stray leaf or two in her thick red hair. She took a seat at the end of the table and began to pick pieces of fruit out of a bowl of salad to Miranda's evident mortification.

"Mom says you killed a lot of people," Madge said around a mouthful of crunchy green apple, "is that true?" There was an audible intake a breath at the blunt question but Sayeeda only snickered.

"Yes, that is true," she admitted gravely.

"Are you going to kill anyone here?" Madge pressed on, blissfully unaware of the mood she was inspiring.

"That shouldn't be necessary," Sayeeda responded diplomatically. Madge frowned in evident disappointment.

"What if they shoot at you?" the girl pressed on.

"Well in that case it would be necessary... so yes," Sayeeda said. Taya, Neil and Brahm all laughed, the later covering his mouth at the glare he received from his wife and younger daughter. Farah opened her mouth to steer the conversation back to safer ground but Madge was not to be deterred.

"Why do you look younger than Mom? Aren't you old?" Madge asked. Farah sighed and Miranda and Tomaz both flushed with embarrassment. There was some truth in the observation, despite being nearly four years older than Miranda, Junebug looked as though she were in her late twenties, rather than her sideral age which was closer to forty.

"Well Madge," Sayeeda responded, ignoring the mouthed 'Margaret' from her sister, "I spend a lot of time in space going very fast which makes time go slower for me."

"Also she spent three years as a popsicle in a cryo pod," Neil interjected, a mischievous glint in his eyes. Madge made a 'whoa' sound which finally gave her mother the chance to reassert control of the conversation.

"I don't imagine you are staying on Celandine very long?" Miranda asked hopefully. Junebug shrugged, a little bemused at the combination of the familiar and the bizarre. Family life like this was alien to her experience and made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn't really define. She had felt this way when she had first come home on leave after five years in the Armored. Fortunately, the sense of alienation she had felt then was attenuated by the presence of Neil and Taya who reminded her she wasn't alone among civilians.

"A couple of days," Junebug responded, "I'm still waiting for exact times and quotes from the dockyard to repair our ship." Madge immediately began asking questions about the Highlander, an odd combination of the charmingly naive and the very well informed.

"You will stay with us of course," Brham declared, "Your room is still pretty much made up, we will have it aired out for you."

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Emmaline had spoken truthfully when she told Neil that the manor had been very effectively cleared out. Even dousing spells did not reveal caches of gold hidden in the walls or under the floorboards. There was a pleasant residual glow in what might once have been the strong room but not a single loose gelt. There were a number of small valuable objects, a carved snuff box, and a writing set inlaid with jade which had gone into her small pack of possessions. Not for the first time she considered the case she had stolen in Nuln and the pieces of warpstone inside. How much might they fetch when they reached Altdorf. The thought made her groan with almost sexual excitement.

Fortunately the family had been less successful in removing more fungible supplies. The larder contained several pots of freshly churned honey, dark bread, wheels of cheese, even a ham and a side of bacon. As Neil made his way up from his grisly task she headed down the stairs and into the wine cellar, which was completely stocked. She was no expert on wines so she simply selected several of the fanciest looking bottles and carried them clinking up to the sitting room where she had laid out her impromptu dinner of ham and cheese. It was more than she was likely to drink, but she intended to be well provisioned when they began the long trek to safety in the morning. The thought of all the walking made her legs ache, but unless they could find a boat by the side of the Reik there wasn’t anything for it. The mansion had a stable but it had been emptied of horses when the family fled to safety in the city.

“Still have the top on,” Neil commented in a tone of manufactured disappointment as he emerged from the stairwell, his grisly task complete. It surprised Emmaline that he had bothered to bury the nameless servant, something which had not even occurred to her. She wondered what commentary that was on their respective ethos but as always with questions of morality, the curiosity passed quickly.

“The night is young,” she teased, shaking her considerable expanse of bosom to make the purloined necklace clink. Neil grinned and deposited his armful of firewood into the stone fireplace against the wall. He looked around for flint and tinder then jumped back as a spell from Emmaline spontaneously ignited the timber into a merry blaze.

“Sigmar’s balls!” Neil gasped then shot her an accusing look which she deigned to ignore. As an afterthought she waved her hand and spoke another jaw breaking syllable, confining the smoke to the chimney so that it wouldn’t advertise their presence. Even so the fire was something of a risk, but it might be long days before they could count on it being safe to light one.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug looked around, saw she would get no back up from her crewmates and sighed. She strode out of the concourse away from the security men despite the fact she had no inkling as to where her mother had parked.

“Neil, Taya, this is my mother Farah,” she said, completing introductions and allowing her mother to lead the way to a sleek black air speeder which lay among scores of broadly similar vehicles. Every few seconds there was a tone and a low pulsing note as one of the vehicles lifted or landed, carrying passengers too and from the star port.

“Any friend of Sayeeda’s is welcome here of course,” the older woman burbled as she climbed into the pilots seat, gesturing them to sit on the luxuriously upholstered seats inside. The buzz and roar of the spaceport shut off immediately as the tempered glass wings closed around them with a soft pneumatic hiss. The vehicle rose smoothly and boosted away. Farah turned her seat to face them, the vehicle set to the automated pilot beacons which allowed sky traffic to flow without constant accidents.

“Now when you say business partners…” Farah pressed eyes bright.

“Yes, Neil is my boyfriend,” Junebug responded to the unspoken question. Farah clapped her hands together delightedly.

“Oh wonderful, and so handsome, do you have a wedding date? Any children?!” she ejaculated. Junebug’s face remained the expressionless mask that it did behind a gunsight.

“I can’t have children Mother,” she replied. Farah’s face became pettish.

“Oh everyone says that but…”

“I had a partial hysterectomy six years ago,” Junebug responded. Her mother gasped.

“Sayeeda Selene Cykali! Why would you do such a thing!”

“Selene?” Taya mouthed to Neil but was ignored by mother and daughter.

“I mean you have to make your own decisions but you know I love grand children and…” Sayeeda interrupted the diatribe by lifting up her shirt to reveal a knot of scar tissue on her muscular stomach.

“A uranium penetrator hit my LAV and spawled off a six inch piece of the inner hull,” Junebug reported, tracing the old wound with a finger tip. Her eyes were like gun muzzles, their focus years and light years away.

“I spent three weeks in the autodoc at Base Alpha,” she concluded. Farah’s face blanced with shock and then relaxed to a scolding disapproval.

“Well, I did tell you not to get mixed up in any of that,” Farah said, somewhat lamely.

“The countryside is beautiful,” Taya injected smoothly into the awkward silence that followed. The cityscape had faded away and vast arboreal forests, cut with streams and green hills flashed below.

“You sound surprised,” Junebug said, grateful for the change of topic.

“I just always assumed that….” Taya trailed off, clearly unsure how to proceed.

“That I came from some hell hole, red of tooth and claw?” Junebug asked, obviously amused despite herself. Taya shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

“Pretty much,” she agreed a trifle lamely.

“Celandine is a beautiful place,” Farah agreed as the vehicle banked close to an impressive waterfall before curving away to the south.

“I don’t know why anyone would ever leave it,” she added. The older woman shot a meaningful look at her daughter but Junebug was already laying back in her seat, eyes closed in a veteran’s cat nap.


About an hour later the air speeder settled onto a private pad on the outskirts of a glittering city of pleasant white buildings and green parks. The Cyckali residence was typical of its type, several acres of gardens around a large single story structure with three distinct wings. A gravel path linked it to the tree lined boulevards that served pedestrian and ground car traffic. Three figures, an older man and a younger couple were already standing on the moss lawn as the flyer settled onto its gravel landing sight. Junebug started awake, eyes wide and hand reaching for a holster she wasn’t wearing. A moment later her eyes focused and she relaxed. They climbed out of the car and the trio came over.

“Sayeeda, it has been a long time,” the younger woman greeted her. The older man, a stocky powerful specimen with thining hair and a devil may care grin rushed past to enfold Sayeeda in a hug.

“By the Goddess it is good to see you girl!” he boomed. Sayeeda smiled inspite of herself as she returned the hug.

“It is good to see you too dad,” she surrendered.

“This is my boyfriend and pilot Neil Edward’s, and my friend Taya,” she introduced. The young woman who had spoken was introduced as Sayeeda’s sister Miranda and the other man her husband Tomaz.

“Aunty Sy!” a voice shouted as a red headed child of perhaps seven years erupted from a nearby hedge. She pounded across the gravel, shedding leaves as she came before throwing her arms around the mercenary. The child shared some facial features with Sayeeda but was paler and had some of the muscular build of her grandfather.

“If it isn’t little Madge!” Sayeeda crowed, scooping the girl up and spinning her around. The girl giggled and Sayeeda set her down, making a desultory effort to brush leaves and dirt from her clothing.

“Don’t call her that,” Miranda said in the tone of someone fighting a losing battle.

“If it isn’t Madge,” Sayeeda replied, deliberately misinterpreting the instruction, “all big now.”

Sayeeda’s father had crossed to deliver a formal kiss to the back of Taya’s hand before gripping Neil’s hand in his own and pumping it vigorously.

“I am Ibram Cykali,” he introduced himself, “but you must call me Brahm.” A robotic servant had emerged from the house and begun unloading what little luggage they had brought.

“We have lunch prepared in the dining room, come, come,” Farah clucked, attempting to get the party moving.

“Margaret, why don’t you go and wash…” Miranda began but the girl was already moving, deftly slipping behind Taya to cut off her mothers attempt to grab her before fleeing back through the hedge to her own entertainments. The younger Cykali daughter glared after her child but apparently thought better of attempting to coral the girl as the party headed into the pleasantly cool interior of the house.

“You must tell us of your self Master Edwards,” Brahm enthused as they entered a dining room dominated by a long table of dark polished marble, places already set.

“Sayeeda has never bought a man home before, so you are something of a novelty!”