The Maestra Hadissa snored softly into Fissal’s rib cage, as he lay on his back with her curled up against his side like a limpet in its shell beneath the thin cotton blanket. He thought she may have drooled onto his stomach sometime in the last hour, as she sang the Song of a Thousand Partially Blocked Sinuses into the left side of his torso. He wanted to laugh so much in this moment it was almost painful.

  One of the most feared mages of the Kuljat Almulajat not only snored, she made little “peep” noises after each gargling susurration at the back of her throat. It was, from any other woman he could imagine, slightly endearing. Possibly, there were couples out in the world who felt great comfort at the sounds of sleep breathing produced by their partners. But, Fissal would have to admit to anyone who had asked him, that he and Maestra Carina Hadissa were not partners. They may be something that could be described as “a couple.” But “partners” implied an equality in the relationship.

  His own parents, what little he retained of his memories of them, had been one of those sets of “partners.”

  But never would he feel like he was her partner. He was her servant, for however long she decided that he would be. It was how the world here in this army camp at the edge of a war worked.

  She made a >SNORK< noise, and shifted slightly. Then the toenails of her feet repeatedly scraped against his left thigh as her feet kicked rapidly. Fissal winced, trying now not to laugh. It wasn’t the raking claws of a beast. Mostly it just tickled.

  Her rank in the Golden Tower, the center for magical learning in the Hamurian Empire that most called the Kuljat Almulajat, ensured that no officer in the Army would interfere with her taking a mere Lieutenant from the Quartermaster Corps and making him serve her. Every few days, his best friend in the Corps, Sergeant Liet Hargris, wandered by the Maestra’s tent to be certain that Fissal still lived (there had apparently been rumors...) and to ensure that he was still “on detached duty.”

  What had started as a single day’s assignment had become just over a week of daily duties for the Maestra. “Please catalog all of the books on my shelves, and make certain the list is alphabetical by the authors’ names, Lieutenant.”

  She had sat at her desk and read one of her larger tomes, while making notes in another as he had worked to record and then pack each book for travel. Fissal had gotten the idea that she was watching him, but could never actually catch her in the act.

  Once that task had been completed, she had insisted that he would be washed, redressed in a clean uniform, and that she would have her private chef cook the two of them dinner so that she could thank him for his diligence and all of his efforts on her behalf. Fissal had attempted to politely beg off from putting the Maestra out, surely it was too much and he was just doing his duty… before he could mount a serious defence of his position, her maids had already had his bath drawn and set behind a screen in the vast Officer Mage tent, a twenty paces long opulent monstrosity by a lowly Quartermaster’s reckoning, which she inhabited.

  So, he had relented. The dinner had been delicious and the selection of wines she had plied Fissal with had been extravagant, though he had worked hard to not be too engaging of a guest. He was, after all, playing the part of a man of humble origins, and “Yes, I and all of my siblings were taught to read and do figures, but it was for the family business. I have never read much beyond the Tales of the Children of Midnight.”

  She had been fascinated with his history and his family. How many brothers and sisters did he have? What was this business his parents ran? Did they still? Oh, your older brother now runs the business with HIS wife? Did they have any children? Oh, they now took care of your mother, what a good son! So, you joined the military when your brother took over the chandlery! That must have been exciting!

  Fissal had noticed that all of the real information was going in one direction. From him, to her. Most of his reciprocal questions, like “where are you from, and what about your family…?” were all met with “Nowhere special,” and “Oh, I don't have any contact with my family, it’s been so long.”

  He knew most Mages would have no memories of their birth families, having been snatched up by the Golden Tower when their Talent had manifested, and having had their minds and memories wiped. But that was “insider” knowledge, and a random army clerk like the person he had created, wouldn’t know that. The Tower kept that a secret.

  But most Mages, once they were elevated to that post, would either create a fictional family so as to avoid these awkward social moments, or would work hard to make new families of their own, and talk about them in new social situations.

  It was curious.

  As the night wore on, Maestra Harissa had removed her ceremonial mantle and its purple and red cowl, revealing her tightly braided, silver highlighted, almost black hair. With her dark skin, high cheekbones, and wide mouth, it was a momentary shock for Fissal. When he was called Two, he had never thought of wizards and Mages like Maestra Hadissa as women. They were just… Mistresses and Maestras. Like most lower castes in the Tower, all above were Power. Not... "people."

  But now looking at the petit, refined, elegant woman across the table from him now, he was becoming nervous. A powerful, probably wealthy, certainly influential… human woman.

  It had to be a trick. She was going to lull him into a feeling of safety, and then capture him! Make him tell her where his siblings had run to… but, now she was pouring him another glass of wine. And drinking one herself as she hummed a song that she said she couldn’t remember the lyrics to, did he know it…?

  He did not.

  The Maestra had ended the dinner cordially, her face set with a happy smile and her eyes alight with kindness for the officer who had taken so much of his time to assist her in the move to the new camp.

  It was then that she cast a sleeping spell upon him.

  It was awkward.

  He felt it rush over him as he had stood from the table and bowed to the Maestra, thanking her for the lovely meal. The air had rippled and thickened about him, becoming scented with a fragrance of some flower he had never been able to identify. As the spell of slumber had swept across the room from her to rush over the lieutenant, he had recognised the feel and the intent.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  So, Fissal had yawned broadly. Blinked as he looked about the voluminous tent, and then let his body slump to the floor. He had no idea of what was going on with this beautiful little mage, but she couldn’t know who he was. She had cast a spell on him. None of the Masters of the Golden Tower would bother with such a ploy. They all knew it wouldn’t have worked. This had to be something different. Something that had nothing to do with his Pride, their escape from Hamuria, nor anything to do with Hamuria’s war with Velspe.

  Carina Hadissa, Maestra of the most Puissant of Mystic Arts, had giggled and clapped her hands. There was a shuffling of feet, and then several hands had lifted Fissal up, and transported him to a cot that had been set up behind the same screen behind which her maids had previously scrubbed him within a finger's breadth of his life before dinner. “Thank you, ladies. Strip him down to his small clothes, and wrap him in the blankets. He will be fine until dawn. Please return then with his uniform cleaned and ready for the day, and have the chef prepare a hearty breakfast for my good Lieutenant.”

  Through the skin of his eyelids, Fissal saw the light of the lamps all go dim as they were extinguished.

  That task had then become

  His greatest fear was that she would sense his Talent. Even as backwards and as confusingly stunted as it was, his Talent had gained him admittance to the Golden Tower once. And he had been a member of several Prides of Apprentices over the years. His bizarre form of Talent had kept him from ever graduating to the rank of Mage. And so once every few years he would have his mind wiped by several Masters working together, and be slotted into a new Pride of Apprentices. The issue was that external magic would not, could not in fact, work on Fissal. His ability to fake the effects of the memory erasure spells had been perfected after so many applications.

  For years he had been an Apprentice called Two. Now, after many twists and turns, including his use of his Talent to reshape his body and remake his face into that of someone new, Fissal was serving the Army again, in its war with Velspe, to make certain that his fellow members of his last Pride would escape their lives in the Army. Escape their service to the Boy King of Hamuria, and his mages and wizards of the Kuljat Almulajat.

  And now, for all of his efforts, for all of his lies in creating this new life for himself, he was back to serving a mage. Oddly, he had never been a student of Maestra Hadissa. Her specialty at the Golden Tower, before so many mages had been drafted into the Army, had been teaching both the mundane classes of HIstory, and the Talent School of Illusions and Glamours.Five had been her best student in the first, and One had been her favorite student in the second.

  If One could see him now, she would rage like all of the storms to have crossed the plains in a ten year span all at once. His less than balanced sibling apprentice had always been fiercely loyal to the petite, dark skinned Ocre Maestra. And One, as she had been known back then, had deeply disdained Two, or “Lieutenant Fissal A’Hahn” as he was now known. Occasionally Fissal wondered what names the others had taken for themselves since they had all fled.

  But, now he had other more pressing concerns.

  The former history and Glamours Maestra had cornered him after he had completed a task for the Quartermasters Corps, and she had insisted to his superior officers’ that she absolutely needed his assistance “Just for the day.” That day had stretched itself out to a week and a half. The approaching dawn would see him spending an twelfth day as the Maestra’s personal attendant and guard, though everyone knew she didn’t need anything like a supplies clerk with a sword to watch over her.

  After that first night “sleeping” on the cot she had her servants drop him onto, he had been put in charge of organizing the moving of her tent and all of its belongings to the new site where the Army had shifted this forward encampment to.

  Pretending surprise at waking on a cot in her tent, she had then bustled him to a breakfast table with a story about giving him too much strong wine, and would he please forgive her? Hadissa was a force to be reckoned with, and talked over him until he obeyed. She then set him to optimizing the move of herself and the remainder of the larger tents used by the Mage Corps. And so he had spent three days working dawn to dusk on moving the officer mages and their belongings.

  Then she had convinced and cajoled him into staying to help them settle in. Could he arrange for a central (smaller) tent in the Mage Quarter for the senior staff to meet? Surely he wouldn’t have wanted to make any of the individual Masters or Mistresses need host the strategic planning sessions?

  Day by day, Carina had taken over his life and redirected his duties. She had even begun to send him back to the weapons training sessions the Officers of the regular Army ran, his absence from those exercise and networking opportunities had been noted. When he had begun to show up again, many of the other young officers had cast sidelong glances at the awkward lieutenant. She had insisted he run along every morning to them, but he had to be right back as soon as possible to meet Carina’s needs.

  One thing had led to another, and through a thousand small steps, the formidable Maestra had taken over Fissal’s life. There was a small, very clean and organized little space in her tent where all of his own belongings now lived. His own tent had been given to a newly made officer in the infantry.

  Carina had insisted. She had begun using him as her personal secretary. He would stand behind her at meetings with the Mage Corps staff, as well as with the general Army staff, and while armed, he would take notes for her. Then he would rewrite those notes, in what she had been amazed to find was his “elegant, formally trained calligraphy! Oh you parents must have been so proud!”

  It was a minor slip up on his part, he hadn’t thought to roughen his writing style. But, here he was now, keeping the Maestra’s formal journal for her.

  As their relationship had become intimate, he had done his best to pretend the fumbling innocence of a man who had SOME experience, but knew he was here at pleasure of someone who vastly outranked him. She had been demanding, and knew exactly what she liked and what she didn’t.

  His Talent and its oddly inward focus had allowed him to… cheat where most men couldn’t. He was everything she wanted, needed and had demanded. Even until she was exhausted into unconsciousness.

  Though, most nights since they had started sharing a single bed, after a bout of passionate kissing, Carina would simply lay on Fissal. Her long braids spread over him where he lay, as his free hand traced along the length of her back, she spent hours looking at his many scars, gently tracing each one with her fingers. Sometimes she would shed a few tears as her fingers ran along the long, jagged paths that had been cut across his chest, or his back, to wherever they might lead.

  He had tried to talk to her about her tears. And why his scars might make them appear, but she wouldn’t talk about those feelings, any more than she would talk about her past, that had betrayed her by leaking their secrets. She would just continue to draw her fingertips along them, the delicate little digits slowly following along the winding, intersecting paths that mottled his body.

  He had used his Talent to grow those scars. Those lies. His body was unmarked by the battle he had ridiculously allowed himself to get dragged into. To sell the story of his part in that battle, Fissal had created these wounds using his Talent. Then he had created the scars.

  Carina had been playing her fingers along those raised lies before falling asleep last night.

  Now, just before the sun rose on their 12th day together, he slowly extracted himself from the bed, trying to not wake her, wrapping her in warm blankets where before she had been pressed to his warm skin.

  Carina made another gurgling, snorting snore that ended in its distinctive >peep<, before shuddering and burrowing more deeply beneath the covers.

  Fissal dressed and slipped from the tent, walking toward the Officers’ Block to spar with the other young officers. He was hoping he might run into Liet. Just to see what the man was doing this week. To possibly find out what the rest of the Army had been up to this last week and a half.

  He looked back at the purple and red tent of the Mage to whom he had been lying every day, and every night, and realised he would have to continue to do so for…how long?