Sin and Soil Read online

  Sin and Soil

  Anya Merchant

  Copyright © 2020 by Anya Merchant

  All rights reserved

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work is intended for adults only. It contains substantial sexually explicit language and scenes that may be considered offensive by some readers. None of the characters engaging in sexual conduct in this work of fiction are under the age of 18, legally unable to give consent, or related by blood.

  Contents

  Sin and Soil

  Anya Merchant

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 1

  Damon Al-Kendras did his best to appear intimidated as the lidaragis, more commonly known as a wolf troll, approached him from the other side of the arena. Interestingly, it wasn’t all that hard.

  He’d fought lidaragi before. He’d fought this particular one before, a full seven times previously in front of audiences and countless dozen more during training.

  He had as much experience on the subject as any licensed gladiator west of the Endless Ocean possibly could. He’d seen what their jaws could do.

  Damon watched as the monster snapped its teeth, spittle flying loose in a humid spray, and heard the overlapping shouts of the Averician nobles eager for blood. He took a tighter grip on his sword, circling left and preparing for act one.

  The wolf troll let out a roar loud enough to send a tremor through the air between it and Damon. He matched it with a cry of his own, swinging sword up over his head in one hand, more for imagery than as a practical defense.

  The wolf troll, or Jorgan, as they’d affectionately named him, was not trained to hold back. Jorgan knew his cues for the performance along with a few simple commands like follow, wait, and play dead.

  He was as well trained as a monster could be, which was more of a disconcerting thought than a comforting one.

  “Does Jorgan seem a touch angrier today than usual?” asked Austine, his blade partner.

  “He’s a convincing actor,” said Damon. “So much so that I do occasionally wonder whether he’s forgotten that it’s an act.”

  The wolf troll stomped its foot, eyeing both of its opponents with what seemed to be pure, unbridled fury. Austine was playing to the crowd, grinning and seeking their approval as he twisted his sword into a flourish of blade routines, despite his previously expressed misgivings.

  Damon blinked. Orange light flickered from several dozen torch sconces set into the gritty, oft stained walls of Avaricia’s blood sport pit. It gave them each a dozen shadows, a dozen dark doppelgangers matching the minute movements each participant, man and monster alike.

  “No sense in wasting time,” said Damon. “Remember. Act one is all about setting expectations and—”

  “Building tension,” interrupted Austine. “Yes, I know. First one to get the crowd on their feet with a daring attack drinks for free tonight.”

  “You’re on.” Damon suppressed a grin as the two of them moved to attack from different angles. “And I’ll hear no complaints if I decide I’m in the mood for expensive ale.”

  Austine nodded, shooting one last glance over his shoulder. Damon noted how his friend’s attention lingered on a group of women watching from the edge of the stands, nearly all of whom were made up in fanciful, glittering Turning Festival masks.

  The holiday was relatively minor, one of dozens littering the spring season in Avaricia, but the city’s nobles never passed up an opportunity to spend an evening carousing. Especially not under the guise of anonymity, as tradition mandated.

  Damon’s eyes held, partially against his own volition, as his gaze passed over one of the noblewomen in particular. Her hair was blonde, done up in a proper Merinian bun, complete with two loose spirals dangling alongside either ear.

  Her build was petite, with full curves and lean recesses perfectly highlighted by a tight black ribbon silk dress. Damon saw a tiny, mischievous smile play across her lips underneath the mask. He realized that she was, in fact, watching him back.

  She reminded him of someone, though he didn’t have the time to attempt to remember who. Austine had sprung into motion, approaching the wolf troll at a dead sprint.

  A low, powerful growl emanated from Jorgan’s maw, shaking Damon somewhere deep within his bones. He saw Austine commit to a stab. The wolf troll’s arm was a blur, countering with perfect, reflexive speed.

  Damon had always thought that his friend received less than sufficient credit for his bravery. Austine was well-suited to playing the part of the fearless, determined hero. In his mind, he was both invincible and justifiably reckless.

  Damon watched as Jorgan, the trained wolf troll, buffeted Austine, the fearless stage gladiator, into and through the air. He watched his friend land in a sprawl that was as convincing as it likely was painful.

  The Traveling Troll Bout, or Liguente Lidaragis, as it was sometimes advertised to the Remenai majority crowds of Veridan’s Curve, was simple entertainment. It was technically possible for Damon and Austine to make it through all four acts of the monster bout without taking a single major hit. Of course, they’d never managed it before, never even come close.

  He watched as his friend struggled to his feet, glaring at the wolf troll with genuine disdain. Rolling out one shoulder, Austine appealed to the crowd, jabbing his sword into the air and charging forward into another foolhardy attack.

  Damon felt a few long-held concerns about his brash, boastful friend’s ability to keep a cool head begin to resurface. In a monster bout, it was always a challenge to keep the performance’s momentum and drama within entertaining boundaries.

  Austine’s job in this particular bout was to gracefully and, under ideal circumstances, carefully, allow himself to lose. Make a show of taking a dangerous angle, and take a pulled blow from Jorgan, the hideous wolf troll of nightmares, for the sake of putting on a good show.

  Damon was convinced that Austine simply wasn’t equipped with the ability to generate humility. The crowd was somewhat to blame. Giving Austine anything resembling universal encouragement was like pouring oil into a hearth and fanning the flames.

  He smiled, shifting his longsword into position with less flare than his friend, but moving much more carefully toward Jorgan, who was currently slamming Austine into the side of the arena wall.

  Len, their troupe master, had trained a… certain level of restraint into the wolf tro
ll, but it was only enough to prevent him from maiming or killing Damon and the other gladiators. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Most of the time.

  “Prepare yourself, lidaragis! Prepare yourself!” Damon coughed and cleared his throat before repeating the carefully trained command a bit more slowly. “Pre…pare.”

  Jorgan finally released Austine from his grip and began stomping from foot to foot. Austine’s wounds weren’t that bad, just a cut on the forehead and a solid black eye, but Damon strongly doubted his friend would be rejoining the fray.

  He was careful about his engagement, making his attacks land where the wolf troll’s green hide skin was thick, calloused, near impervious to the cuts. A few extra tricks here and there, namely using a flask of climbing vine sap hidden up one sleeve to fake evidence of troll blood, and the roaring crowd got what they wanted without the pointless death.

  Despite the choreographed nature of the fight, it still wasn’t easy to drive Jorgan into submission. Damon had trained as a swordsman as a teenager, back in the time before the Godking Avarice had banned true death fights.

  He was the best he knew, and he knew many. Jorgan wouldn’t have stood much of a chance against him if he’d been fighting to kill instead of to impress. He ducked under a sweeping, open palmed strike and twisted into a sword slash that had him flipping sideways over one shoulder.

  The hilt of his sword bucked against his hand as the blunted blade caught the troll across the length of its thigh. Damon let another spurt of the climbing vine sap go, and Jorgan took the signal, dropping to one knee as though his leg had lost its strength.

  The angle Damon landed at put his gaze into the crowd again. He saw the blonde woman in the mask flash a curious smile, and she folded her arms, somehow looking both intrigued and unimpressed.

  The crowd roared as Jorgan reached forward, trying to snatch at Damon. He leaned back a few inches, letting the troll’s fingers pass near enough to rustle his shirt, and then launched into the next series of strikes.

  ***

  “Under the eyes of the God, Rovahn, and the Goddess, Leandra, these two brave warriors risked their very lives to send one of the Forsaken’s minions into the dirt,” boomed Len, the troupe master of the Gleaming Scythe Gladiatorial Entertainment Company. “The least you can do is risk opening your purses to support their valor!”

  Damon made a show of looking deeply humbled as the audience tossed a tribute of copper and silver coins into the arena. They’d already been paid a base performance fee by a representative of the Godking, but tips were tips, and it was no small deluge of money.

  Jorgan was doing an excellent job of playing dead as Austine and one of the arena guards pulled him down into the arena pits. It was the last show of their contract, and they would be releasing the wolf troll back into the wilds of the New North within the next few days, deep in the unmapped forests of the northernmost Merinian colonial territory.

  Damon had already given Jorgan his own sentimental goodbye before the start of the fight. They’d pushed the ruse to its limit enough across the seven performances, and according the Len, the cost to keep the monster fed and housed made keeping him around beyond a single tour prohibitively expensive.

  “Austine,” called Damon. “About that ale…”

  Austine gave a noncommittal shrug. “I could go for an ale or two. Or seven. I could go for one of these mysterious and oh so comely masked maidens alongside it.”

  Austine grinned, looking up into the stands at toward a trio of masked women who were apparently waiting for them. He blew them a kiss, which was enough stimulation to break them into a fit of giggles.

  “That’s a promising sign,” said Damon.

  “You can have whichever one is leftover after I’ve picked my two favorites,” said Austine.

  “You’re nothing if not charitable,” said Damon. “But for tonight, I think I’ve got my eye on someone else.”

  He looked toward the masked blonde he’d made eyes with earlier, who was still watching him, and still so perplexingly familiar. She smiled again, and what stirred within him, at least, was something he could place.

  CHAPTER 2

  The streets of Avaricia on the night of the Turning Festival were packed full of people, distractions, and two rather tired gladiators. It was unfortunate, but no real surprise that, by the time Damon and Austine had finished bathing and dressing themselves in shirts and slacks suitable for a proper night out, they’d lost track of their romantic targets.

  “We’ll go to the Butterchurn Lounge,” said Austine. “It’s where fine women such as the ones we recently discovered would congregate.”

  “It’s expensive,” said Damon.

  “Did you forget that I’m buying?”

  “More a general lack of faith in your charity than a lapse of memory.”

  Avaricia had been constructed on top of the remnants of an ancient native city, and there was a contrast between the old stone structures, built centuries ago by the Remenai during a more civilized time of their peoples, and the new wooden buildings in the style of the Merianian colonists.

  The Butterchurn Lounge was in the Upper Docks District, a well-to do area that felt almost like a section of Hearthold shipped across the ocean in pristine condition.

  Or at least, that was what Damon liked to tell himself. The troupe had only performed in Hearthold once, but the long trip out to Merinia’s capital city had been an eye-opening experience for someone who’d grown up in the colonies.

  The Butterchurn Lounge was quiet, which wasn’t all that surprising, given how many masked revelers were congregating in the streets for more performances and the flameworks shows. Damon and Austine found two adjacent seats at the bar and sat down.

  “Two mugs of Black Adder, if you would,” said Austine, to the bartender.

  “Are you attempting to get us both into trouble tonight, Aust?” asked Damon.

  Austine grinned and gestured to his face. “In fact, I’m attempting to get myself out of trouble. They say that beer helps reduce swelling, and my face is in dire need of such relief.”

  “Rovahn’s balls,” said Damon, shaking his head. “That’s absolute bunk. Who told you that?”

  “My face being swollen, or the remedy?”

  “The remedy.”

  “Well, it’s more like more own personal hypothesis,” said Austine. “I’ve been fleshing it out over the past few months. In fact, I might just…”

  He trailed off as the lounge’s door swung open, and the person Damon had been hoping to find stepped in through it. The masked blonde woman was no less stunning up close, short and petite, but not lacking in the bosom or hips.

  Her mask was white and gold, almost matching the color of her hair, with two playful cat ears jutting from the top section. He was close enough to her now to make a guess at her age.

  She was certainly younger than his own twenty-three years, but the confidence he saw in her deep blue eyes made him think that she was at least above twenty, which was the Godking Avarice’s long imposed threshold for intimate relations and betrothal.

  “Leandra’s bush…” muttered Austine. “You are absolutely breathtaking, milady! Please, take a seat over here. Allow us to lavish you with attention.”

  Damon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Austine, as usual, was all bluster, all impulse, and no restraint. He usually got away with blurting nonsense out of his mouth when it came to interacting with women solely off the basis of his height and handsome face.

  Damon, in comparison, was average in most senses of the word. Average height, average build, average and somewhat forgettable features, and depressingly boring brown hair.

  He had his successes here and there when it came to casual romance, but they were normally primed by one of their shows. They were also rarely at the expense of Austine, when he was around to grin and babble out compliments to whichever adoring maiden was his first pick.

  “I watched your fight,” said the young woman in the cat mask. “I
’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  “The wolf troll is truly one of the fiercest opponents I’ve ever faced!” boomed Austine. “I can only hope the danger I was in didn’t needlessly upset you, as I assure you, I had everything under—”

  “You gave it a command, at one point,” she said, ignoring Austine and speaking directly to Damon. He grinned, tapping a finger along the edge of his Black Adder ale.

  “You caught that,” said Damon. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised. You were certainly watching the bout rather attentively.”

  She sat down next to him. Damon motioned to the bartender, who set down another mug of ale for her. She attempted to take a dainty sip, but one of the protrusions on the mask got in the way and a few bits of white froth spilled down the cleavage of her black dress, as though Damon hadn’t already had ample incentive to look that way.

  “It was all just a ruse, wasn’t it?” asked the woman.

  “Would you rather that we’d actually slain a wolf troll for the sake of a bloodthirsty crowd?” asked Damon. “They’re vicious monsters, but they aren’t evil, and even if they were…”

  “You can justify it however you want,” said the young woman. “I caught you. What’s to stop me from announcing the truth and unveiling you?”

  Austine snorted. Damon gave her a patronizing smile and a small shake of his head.

  “You aren’t from around Veridan’s Curve, are you?” he asked.

  She opened her mouth as though to snap back with a retort, and then hesitated, blushing slightly. Instead of speaking, she took a sip of her beer, coughing as she set the mug down.

  “What my brusque friend is no doubt trying to say is that there’s no real secret to what we do,” said Damon. “Death fights are officially banned by the Godking Avarice. While monster fights are occasionally to the death, it’s rare. The crowd accepts the fantasy regardless. It’s all for fun, and everyone knows that, aside from the children who come to the bouts and—”

  “I am not a child!” snapped the young woman.

  Damon chuckled. Austine let out a booming laugh and clacked his now empty mug on the counter. What was visible of the woman’s face reddened even more deeply, and she pushed back from the counter, disappearing out through the Butterchurn Lounge’s door before either of them could stop her.