Ephemera & Tales

Previous parts of Trent's story are indexed here. Ru belongs to the lovely tsuki_no_bara. Eden belongs to cicirossi

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Written on lined paper torn out of a ringbound notebook, with no return address.

Dear Gram,

I’m going to assume mom’s already been in touch to tell you how I’ve messed up and left school, right? It isn’t quite like that though.

I guess I should start at the beginning. First, though, sorry it’s taken me a while to get to telling you all this. It’s been a very weird couple of days. I really wanted to call you, except I’m staying at Ru’s and running up his parent’s long distance seems like it would be rude, and I’m trying to keep the cell just for emergencies.

You remember Ru, right? I think my mom would have introduced him as Trent – that’s his real name – but he came over a bunch of times the last summer you were staying with us. Tall, skinny, really good friend? So, yes – I’m staying at his for a few days, and we’re going to be getting a place together just as soon as we can find somewhere half decent. And that’s not starting at the beginning.

Yes, I have left school, no I haven’t gone insane, no I’m not totally ungrateful for all the opportunities mom and dad have given me, and no I’m not throwing it all away over a teenage temper tantrum.

( snipped for length )

You ask, Tammlin, how unusual the tastes of our clients can be, and I find I have no answer.

Working as we do gives one a different perspective, I think, to that of any clerk of the courts, no matter your personal interests or upbringing. Sex and violence, punishment and pleasure - almost anything that these words conjure in your mind I am sure we have been paid handsomely for at one time or another. That or we have turned it down. Some people may have a birthright that will protect them from the consequences of the occasional unexplained death amongst their serving girls, but that does not make such a thing conscionable to any of us six. Some of these southern Knights seem perhaps to feel that the law is far away from their concerns.

( Read more... )

Jarret is the only one of us who you could really call skinny. Amet is all luscious taut curves, and Karin tends to the voluptuous, with Skein somewhere in between – Amazonian is one term. Jarret is a tall stretch of skin and bone, while Kes is somewhat chubby. I myself am pure Knight’s build – broad muscles and long legs - so between the six of us, there is something for most tastes, which is, after all, the point.

Our show is – unusual. Rarity is always a valuable commodity, and Karin and Skein set out from their start to make sure that they always had an edge on the competition. Brothels are scattered at every street corner, it seems, and bordellos scarcely any rarer. The sort of private entertainment’s that we provide is more suited to the upper reaches of the courts than the scrambling of those with pretensions to nobility. Although if they scramble hard enough and spend their coin wisely – well a job is a job.

None of us started out half so picky – well none of us save Kes, but that’s what happens when you seduced noble-born boys to run away with the circus. It is fortunate that his father is insufficiently influential to make things uncomfortable anywhere outside Czen city. Seeing as Kes has sworn up, down and backwards that he’d rather face the sword than go back to that provincial staging station, it’s hardly a handicap.

Kes’s talents were more than enough to warrant his joining the troupe, even if he hadn’t found a place in my own heart with remarkable alacrity. The boy is a deep dyed natural hedonist, has enough alchemical training to play with flame, and turns the formal poses of a knight’s combat training into a slow stretch of eroticism that is having an effect even from memory. His blade play is exquisite, and he takes training delightfully. To borrow a phrase from the Crush : what’s not to like.

I am fortunate – we are fortunate – that the two ladies who brought this group together are themselves lovers. It makes them tolerant. Perhaps one day we shall be eight – thus far Jarret has kept his interest in Amet purely professional. Amet was briefly under the impression that I might care for her company more often. I suspect Kes joining us has thoroughly disabused her of that notion. It’s fortunate – again I trust to Lady Fortune more than is wise perhaps – fortunate that she is not the jealous type. She would be hard to replace within the group, and there are precious few who have her way with knots.