Page 24

She smiles shyly at my passion.

“If we have a boy, should we call him Kobold?”

“No. We should not. Do you really want to commemorate your first murder?”

“It wasn’t really a murder. I mean, it was. But I didn’t know at the time that’s what it was. Maybe a middle name?”

I can only hope that she is joking, or perhaps completely unable to understand the weight of a name. Humans are silly about such things quite often. They forget about the deeper magics, the power of words and of naming things.

“We need to start moving. The sun is beginning to set, and I do not want to be in the forest when night comes.”

She frowns slightly. “Why are you afraid of the forest? I can’t imagine you being afraid of anything.”

“I am not afraid for myself, but for you. I can protect myself, but you are soft, and when night comes the forest will be full of things that can kill without touching. And there is the matter of your third breeding, which is yet to happen.”

She swallows. “But I am so sore. And we already had sex three times!”

“One of those times did not take place in this world. It needs to take place here, before midnight. I would rather make love to you in a meadow than in a forest of horrors.”

“There’s no night in the…”

“Say it. I dare you.”

“No, I’m just saying it’s always daytime. I’ve never been in the forest at night.”

“You’ve never been in the forest at all,” I remind her. “You’ve experienced a digital representation of a place that is deeply more real than your imagination can begin to conceive. Real blood is shed here. Real lives are lost.”

She looks somewhat shamefaced, but not enough for my liking. As she looks toward her toes in an expression of submission, she spots something.

“What is that?”

“What is what?”

“The scroll there?”

I look down, following her eye line. A scroll must have dropped out of some of the gear. Strange, but not entirely uncommon.

“It might be a recipe for soup or something.”

“Or a message the kobolds were delivering.”

She snatches the parchment up, unfurls it, and looks at it, frowning.

“This says these kobolds were bearing a seal intended for the Lord Janessa.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what it says, a seal for the Lord Janessa. Did you miss the seal?” She frowns. “Maybe it doesn’t drop every time. Maybe you have to keep killing kobolds to get the seal.”

“Stop muttering nonsense, human,” I growl. “What are you talking about?”

She hands me the note. “See for yourself.”

It is written in a fine hand, which is instantly odd. Far too fine for kobold script. I expected some kind of a recipe or some incoherent scratchings, but this is clearly the writing of someone educated.

“Lord Janessa, please find the fifth seal enclosed. I trust you are well. —A Friend.”

There is no seal. This is not acceptable. I am going to have to look into this. There are many noble houses and species in this world. Mine is of course the largest and most powerful, but the politics of the realm are more complicated than I like to think about most of the time.