Paffiwr had come to particularly love the massages available at the Baths of Maldod. Over the past six or seven months, she had spent several very happy afternoons being tended to in this way, always with the same attendant taking a hand in her treatment.

There was something about the ceremony of her armour being stripped from her - for Captain Paffiwr had not insisted after her first trip on removing it herself - and then being gently laid down onto her back on the warm stone slab used for private massages in the Baths of Maldod, anointed with the perfumed oils much favoured of the place, and then slowly, carefully, and methodically massaged from temples to toes, with time taken to break down tensions and clear knots from every muscle along the way, that made her feel so good.

It had in fact taken her the first half of the year that Captain Tundryl had paid for to realise exactly what it was that made this experience such a pleasant one; much to her own surprise, it was the fact that, once her armour was off and her sword belt was away she was effectively helpless.

She might be stronger than the attendant looking after her - indeed, this surely was true - but something about the confidence they had in what they did meant that they could always shape her posture and her position and guide her until the massage had begun; and then, with the scent of the oils in her nostrils and the tingling, euphoric period of almost thoughtlessness that followed a massage of her temples, it would not have mattered if an alarm had been sounded declaring that the city was being invaded by Glacien come again and an army raised from throughout the empire; under that touch for all her muscle and power she was as limp and weak and helpless as a kitten.

She would never have believed that she would have enjoyed being so helpless. The Baths of Maldod had made her come to terms with something she could never even suspected of herself.

As winter ended and spring started again, one day while she was being massaged at the Baths of Maldod she fell into talking with her attendant. Gradually, she had come to do this more and more; it had taken some time to become willing to Unburden herself, however.

Captain Paffiwr had always thought of herself as a soldier before anything else. She would not have believed that any part of her life other than her duty could be stressful, could be a source of frustration. If that were so she had assumed that civilians would not be so soft as they had always seemed.

Of course, she was not willing to talk about her duty with anyone not sworn to the same. How could she betray the confidence of her Empress so? But it did turn out that she had concerns that she had ignored, thinking of them as unimportant because they could not measure up to her duty. Little by little, her attendant had been brought into each one of these worries and frustrations.

It had never occurred to her to ask the name of her attendant, but if one day she had showed up and not been greeted by the same smiling face, she would have felt obscurely cheated.

Perhaps it was her attendant’s quasi-anonymity that allowed Paffiwr to talk about things. “I grow tired,” she said. “Each day that I do my duty seems to weigh more heavily upon me.”

“And why is this?” asked the attendant. “What makes it such a struggle?”

“I am not sure,” she said. “whatever it is, it weighs on me more over time, but I do not know if this means that it is a new phenomenon or simply one I had not noticed.”

Her attendant took hold of her by the shoulder and by the arm, repositioned her arm, and drove her own elbow into Paffiwr's shoulder with skill. Captain Paffiwr gave a low satisfied moan at this treatment, feeling some of her frustrations buffeted away, as if her muscles loosening was enough for her to give up on her frustrations.

Was that it? Was she holding on to you frustrations through reflex that should be better released? was she too strong to let go of all the things dragging her down?

“Perhaps this is not a useful way to think of it,“ said her attendant, “But it has often helped me. When I am overwhelmed, I break things down by priority. Tell me, Captain, of all your duties how many of them can be carried out by you alone?”

Paffiwr had to think about that question for some time before she could answer. By the time she had done so, the massage had progressed from both shoulders most of the way down her spine, and as she lay face down on the slab, her oiled body warm against the stone, the perfumes and alchemies of their massage oils seeping into her person through every pore, it seemed to her that the answer was easier to find, and curiously, she did not find herself thinking about the concerns inherent in not betraying her knowledge of the Guard to a civilian at all.

“Truthfully, I feel that any given part of my duties aside from combat could be handed over to someone, with at least some degree of confidence in its success,” she said slowly. “But I would have to choose the right person.”

“Hmm.” The attendant, oiling Paffiwr’s sides and warming the oil under her palms, let her fingertips stray lower, quivering them across the soft and sensitive flesh of her breasts. Paffiwr shivered, her eyes unfocusing for a moment at the surprising pleasure. Moments of contact like this were not uncommon in her massages, but always seemed accidental, and she got so much from the massages that it would have been churlish to complain. “Perhaps it is not a question of deciding by trust,” she said . “I do understand why that is your priority, but if you cannot decide on those terms, there must be some other way to distinguish between the options. Let me ask you this, Captain; is there anybody in the guard to whom you may owe a favour? Or advancement, for that matter?”

And once again her fingertips danced over the sensitive flesh from which Paffiwr took most pleasure. The captain's eyelids fluttered and she thought that, at least, that she had done a good job of suppressing the moan of pleasure which had tried to bubble up through her lips. “There is one person,” she conceded.

*

Months earlier, when Lleidr had first presented herself to the court of Bugail, she had recognised Glacien immediately. It had, however, taken her a couple of days to find an opportunity to speak with him in private and alone, and to do so in a way which did not evoke suspicion on its own.

“Does the Duke know who you are?” She asked. Glacien blinked at her, curiously.

“Your pardon, Lady, but I do not know who you are?”

Lleidr smiled. “I am Lady Alysien,” she said. “Presented newly to court, originally of the principality of Caer Celwydd.” She gave a slight curtsey. “Novice though I may be in courtly ways, I am nonetheless in a position to make a shrewd guess from where you have come. As a student of the arts, I recognise your nose from a number of famous paintings of your family. Or am I wrong?“

She could see the calculation happening behind Glacien’s eyes. She wondered how shrewd he was, whether he would realise how much calculation she was carrying out in her turn. She wondered which of several stratagems still available to her here might be the most effective in establishing a close relationship and gaining the information demanded by the House of Sapphires.

“I cannot say you are wrong,” he said. “But I consider this, my heritage, to be the least important part of my life going forward. The Duke my cousin is aware of my situation. He is also separate from the situation. I do not know your homeland, my lady. Please forgive my ignorance.”

She smiled coquettishly and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Everything can be forgiven, noble sir,” she said. “That is, if an understanding can be reached between two people. I am newly arrived, as I say, and I seek a guide in this place, so to speak.

“I pray you, do not thank me forward, but I would ask of you a favour. As two foreigners in this land, would you do me the honour tomorrow of taking me on a walk about those parts of the Duchy that truly matter and pointing out to me the things I must know and the pitfalls I must avoid?”

When Lleidr set her mind to please , her smile could be pleasing indeed; her manner could be overwhelmingly delightful. It was a posture she often adopted with those who did not know her well enough to suspect, and even many of her victims, years afterwards, remembered her charm and her seemingly genuine empathy before they ever thought of the downfall her work had wrought upon them.

In any case, it would be hard for a gallant noble like Glacien to turn down her request politely. He did not. He simply smiled, half bowed, and said “Shall I meet you at the gates after breakfast?”

*

Glacien did not remain in the public areas of the palace much longer that evening. Doing his best to avoid suspicion, he retired just as quickly as he could justify it.

In his own rooms he found Ceidwad.

“There is somebody new here,” he hissed. “I don't know them, but they're showing far too much interest in me. Do you know anything about this? ”

“I... may do, my Lord,” she said. “I will need to see them before I can be sure.”

Even just a few weeks into his time with her, Glacien had become used to the total submission she offered him. She knew that he had options when dealing with her that he had with no one else. He reached forwards, taking her by the chin , and lifted her face to his locking eyes with her. “Ceidwad?”

“Yes, my Lord?”

“Confess.”

And Ceidwad obediently, compulsively confessed. She told him about the letter she had written, and this time told him all of its contents. She told him about the additional letter to Captain Tundryl contained within. She told him the little she understood about the drama in Captain Tundryl’s family, where she knew some form of enchantment had been used to bring a woman under the noble’s control. She told him why she had selected Lleidr, told him why she considered the woman a threat to his reaccession to the throne.

By halfway through her confession, Glacien had released her jaw and moved away. He listened to some of it with his back to her, staring down at the ducal past courtyard from his window, before sinking into a chair by the writing dust nearby. After she finished speaking, there was silence.

She had been so sure that once her plan was in motion he would accept his destiny and would be grateful to his docile servant for setting plans in place. Now, in that icy silence, it became clear to her that the man who owned her, the man who served and she so truly was, was not exactly the person she believed in would be.

She began to crawl towards him or hands and knees, her head lowered. She stopped when she was in reach of his knees, when she could have leaned forward and kissed his feet. And that was exactly what she wanted to do; The problem was that she wasn't sure she deserved to.

“I am sorry to have displeased you my Lord.”

“You have not ... or rather, not necessarily,” he said. “but I have a lot to think about here.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

At length, he sighed. “I think the problem I'm seeing,” he said, “is that she won't take the same approach you did.” Again she saw him lift his hand and spread his fingers, obviously looking at the Onyx ring that was the sign of his family. “I can defend against that.”

“I wanted her near, my Lord, so that we could work on her.”

“Work on her? How?”

Ceidwad hesitated. “I had not worked that out in detail yet, my lord. I had some thought of using the spell that affected me but now I think about it all I would be able to do is amplify her current position. ” She swallowed. “I think I had simply forgotten that she does not already consider you the rightful Emperor. It's so obvious to me that you are that I can barely conceive of the alternative.”

“What else could you do to her?”

She tilted her head, considering, and then smiled slowly. “I have an idea, my Lord, but it will require some work beforehand...”

*

Lleidr was delighted, the following morning, to discover that Glacien clearly had no idea who she was. Surprisingly, he didn't even seem to suspect that the Empire might send someone to keep tabs on him; as such, she decided that the groundwork she had begun laying toward a potential romantic involvement would be the best way to get the information that she needed.

He certainly behaved as if he had no plans to leave Bugail behind and to return to the Empire. Of course, she was an unknown quantity and he would hardly be expected to tell her everything under the circumstances.

Lleidr smiled, laughed in all the right places, and made sure that she was always close to him; from time to time she touched his arm, either resting her hand sympathetically on his forearm, or letting her fingertips trail across the sensitive skin near his elbow. There were times when she positively simpered.

She was occupying his whole focus, and she knew it. When she gave someone her full focused attention, she almost always got results. Glacien took longer than most, and after some weeks she had invested enough into the gambit that she could hardly change direction.

But that was perfectly alright, because he smiled more now, and he stayed closer to her than he had to begun with. While seated, the nearest arm to her was always resting half way between them, even when it had to be stretched out to do so. Lleidr didn't think he'd even noticed what he was doing, but she certainly had. She'd been watching for it.

She was hardly the greatest seductress in the Empire. What she did was the courtly version of letting someone know that you would be willing to go further, if they pushed, and just allowing enough time that they pushed in steps so small they might not even notice themselves. Over time they would go from polite to desiring without really noticing how it had happened.

She just lamented that it had taken as long as it had to start seeing signs of his falling for her. The bill, when she finally presented it to the House of Sapphires, would be high.

*

Captain Tundryl was surprised by how things were now going. He knew from his uncle that it would take some time before Captain Paffiwr was entirely neutralised, at least insofar as being able to act as a threat to the true Emperor was concerned; he did not entirely know the path that her dissent would take. When he had inquired of the experts within the Baths of Maldod how the process would affect her, he had been told that everybody walked a different route and that everyone's destination was subtly different.

He had nonetheless been assured that Captain Paffiwr would complete her journey grateful to him, willing to show that gratitude in many forms, and treating his own decisions and his own will as more important than her own.

And just recently, captain Paffiwr had started passing duties along to his regiment. This was not unheard of, but it was unusual behaviour; it was hard to read it as saying anything other than that captain Paffiwr's people were not capable of doing everything they had been assigned to doing.

As Captain Paffiwr had the largest of the guard regiments under her command, this was particularly damning.

It was clear to him that this had happened because of his actions in sending her to the Baths, and because he had taken the time to instruct the Baths staff in what he wanted for her. He wished he better understood how he could shape and direct the next steps in the process the metamorphosis she seemed to be undergoing. It worried him that this was being done entirely through the attendants at the Baths of Maldod.

It was out of his control, and he didn't like that. So he directed his men to handle the tasks that Captain Paffiwr had delegated across to him, and he made sure that authorities in the Guard saw that it was his regiment doing these duties, and he continued to meet with Captain Paffiwr once a week.

These meetings were particularly instructive. He had watched her defences lower, slowly at first but with increasing pace as time had gone on, for several months now. He had heard secrets he was sure even her family, the House of Rubies, had no idea about. She had told him so much, and he had caught her eyes straying over him when she thought he was not looking, but as much desire as she seemed to have no confessions of love or even simple lust had followed from it, no intimation of anything more had come.

He was beginning to wonder if he should start to nudge her thoughts in that direction, should start prompting her. But he had known from very early on that there are two ways the attendants at the Baths of Maldod can work their trade; their goals can take effect quickly, or their goals can take effect indetectably. He had opted for the latter, simply hoping that Glacien would wait on his return until a sign came back that all was ready in the empire of Tir Cyfoethog.

It seemed to him that if he was to prompt her to anything further, he might well find her suddenly unwilling to follow the rest, suddenly suspicious of his end goal. And so he took tea with her regularly and attempted to gauge her state of mind.

He had admired Captain Paffiwr not even with the caveat that she supported the wrong ruler for the empire. With Glacien fled while he remained a loyalist he had put such things to the side. He was a citizen not from one of the poorest families (or he should never have become a captain (not in Tir Cyfoethog, especially at that time) but also not from one of the wealthiest. He was not of the aristocracy, and doing his job was how he fed himself, his sister, and, now they were old enough to be somewhat infirm, his parents.

He was not able to view his job purely as a political concern. And viewing the job as the duties that it was, he had to admit that Captain Paffiwr was one of the very best. Or at least that she had been… he was not entirely convinced, now, that the woman he took to lunch once a week still had the drive, courage, wisdom, and determination that had made her the foremost captain of the Guard.

Instead he rather felt that he was in that position. Not because he had overtaken her, but because she had faltered. You could even see it, he thought, in the way she smiled when they sat together now and poured out their drinks. There had been caution and conviction there once. She was no longer cautious around him, no longer guarded at all. But she was also now easily led on any given topic when the two of them talked.

At this point in his meditations, Captain Tundryl sighed. There was no getting around it, he was going to have to prompt Paffiwr the next time they sat down together, and see how easy it would be to disarm her as a threat. To sheathe her sword. And it occurred to him that this would give him an opportunity to sheathe his own sword.

Yes, he decided. The next time they spoke, he would have to act.

*

Glacien had left Bugail, and ‘Lady Alysien’ had followed. This had come a short handful of weeks after Lady Alysien had first arrived in Bugail, And she had not been clear on why he had done so. Indeed that was the main reason that she had followed along , had inveigled her way into his party. They travelled alongside a serving girl someone whose face Lleidr could not look at without searching her memory in a vain attempt to identify where or perhaps simply how they had met before. The woman wore her hair loose and long, dressed in servants clothes that were at once punishingly uncomfortable fabric and such a revealing cut as to be almost worthy of censure.

At first, Lleidr wondered if the serving girl was also Glacien’s lover, but there were always tell tale signs for a bedtime toy. There was almost inevitably a closeness about them and it seemed from what she could see that there was a clear divide; that the serving girl truly considered Glacien a rank above her in every way that mattered.

She had accordingly continued on her path of attempted seduction of Glacien. The Lady Alysien had been constructed, admittedly very quickly, based on what she knew of Glacien and on how she observed him reacting to her. She had created a friendly and intelligent, if obsequious, beauty who saw the only true strength in the world as coming from a masculine sword arm or a powerful title.

Someone who shunned politics but would want the best for anyone whom she knew well and did not hate. Someone, in short who Glacien could presume to be completely indifferent to his political struggles, but yet a potential resource to use in the future, and if not that then a fawning, decorative bauble.

In short the Lady Alysien was everything that Lleidr herself despised. Only her beauty, and her underused intelligence, could be said to be positives in her opinion. However, she had clearly been right that this was the type of woman to whom Glacien would respond. He had quickly started to open up to her, and had warned her of his plans to leave Bugail a full week before he put them into practise.

She had immediately announced her intention to accompany him, and had spent the next half hour allowing him to talk himself around into permitting her to do so.

Glacien had been reluctant at first but had agreed, in the end, on the basis that Lady Alysien clearly felt most comfortable around him. He did not tell her where they were going, he merely arranged an additional berth on the ship where they were travelling.

She knew that his servant had sent off a number of letters by another boat, but unfortunately the servant did not deliver those letters to the boat until it was too late for Lleidr to find an excuse to drop back, make her way over there, steel and read them.

For her this confirmed that Glacien was indeed starting preparations to retake the throne of the empire. Naturally, this was deeply frustrating to Lleidr, and her frustration was compounded by the fact that not a trace of it could be allowed to show on her face.

The Lady Alysien would not condemn these actions. The Lady Alysien would not want to defend the House of Jade. The Lady Alysien was becoming a more frustrating mask to wear by the day.

All the same, the romance was begun in earnest on the seas. She put a lot of time and effort into cultivating the flame of love in him and she reminded herself constantly that the Lady Alysien loved him.

*

In his cabin, Glacien sank down onto the one chair and side exhaustedly. “That woman will not leave me alone.”

“She's looking for evidence, my Lord,” Ceidwad reassured him softly, kneeling in her short skirt on the rough, bare boards of the cabin floor. “You only need to string her along a little to keep her interest.”

“Easy for you to say,” he retorted. “How am I supposed to lay hints at my plans when I have no plans?“

“Well, you could tell her that you know I will need to be neutralised, and you could tell her that this is in hand.” She smiled wickedly. “None of that is a lie, my Lord.”

She had learned that he was being very cautious about lying in front of the Jade spy. She could not blame him; he had little practise in that particular facet of diplomacy.

“I may have to,” he said, and sighed. “All the same, I don't want her thinking about you too much when you're going to be in her face so often. Bad enough that you've been absent from the Empire this long anyway.”

Ceidwad Felt guilty. She could not help it. While she still believed in this man's cause she had sat events in motion in a way which was causing him ongoing frustration.

There was only one reasonable thing she could do. She began to crawl toward him on hands and knees, head bowed.

“May I atone, my Lord?” She asked.

“Yes,” he answered absently. She could tell that his thoughts were elsewhere, but that did not mean she was not going to do her best. She decided that this had to be something special.

Drawing open his belt, she took out his prick from within his trousers. Then, leaning over it she parted her lips and allowed a large bead of her own saliva to build up, banked in her cheeks until she could let it gently descend onto his erect cock.

Ceidwad had taken to gathering her hair into coils which she pinned up atop her head while aboard the ship, as long, loose flowing hair was not practical to her duties on unsteady flooring. In her hurried apprenticeship into obedient slavery - we may hardly call it docile slavery - she had already had many opportunities to learn why loose, long hair is not entirely compatible with domestic service. She reached up and found the pin that kept her hair coiled, and withdrew it, tucked it for the moment into her belt.

One hand encircled his erection and moved swiftly if gently from tip to base to tip, spreading her lubrication up and down his cock. Her head bobbed down, twice, to plant a smacking, tender kiss on each of his balls.

This done, she shifted position again, sitting up straighter and shuffling in closer on her knees, and she lovingly wound a clean, soft, silky tress of her hair around his prick. She put her hand around her hair, gently flicked her tongue across the cocktip and began to stroke, slowly at first, but as she saw Glacien respond more and more enthusiastically, her own urgency increased, her pace picked up, and she started to vary her grip as she pumped, tight at some points and almost caressingly loose at others, until she had him moaning with pleasure at every stroke.

Her eyes rose, not to meet his but simply to watch his reactions so that she could batter gauge how to please him. Everything she was wanted the man she had devoted herself to, the man she had accidentally enslaved herself to, to be happy. She would do anything she possibly could to achieve it.

He was already hard but she felt him harden further, and continued using her hair almost as an offering or sacrifice to his increased pleasure, knowing, with them all at sea, that it would not be as simple as simply and carefully washing her hair once this was done. Her long locks, of which she was so proud, would have to be cut short after this. She could then grow them back out and offer herself to him in this way again after he had taken the throne, in celebration.

This seemed fitting to her; She knew many stories of human or elven maidens who had cut their hair and kept it close cropped until a vow was complete, of Dwarven heroes who went beardless and heroines whose prized braids were cut off and discarded until their ends were achieved.

She would, she decided, dedicate herself to her owner's cause in the same way. And having decided that, having given herself up even further, she came again, most unexpectedly, moaning in the bliss of her own abnegation. It was only moments later, spurred on by her own frantic pumping, that Glacien came too, his sticky seed spilling over her hand and her hair, in a way which seemed to her to seal the bargain.

*

Captain Tundryl had decided, if he was going to confront Captain Paffiwr, he should go about it properly. For this reason, he had arrived at the restaurant where they took tea once a week a half-hour early, and he had spoken specifically to the waiter. The restaurant staff already having speculated their way to the assumption that the two captains were romantically involved, They were more than happy to accommodate him.

Rather than be shown to their usual table , Captain Paffiwr was escorted to a corner table, shadowed somewhat by the layout of the building, and lit only dimly by candles. It had a completely different ambience, but just as importantly there was almost no way for anyone eating there to be overheard or surveilled in any meaningful sense.

Tundryl rose from his chair at her approach and gave her a half bow of deference, as befitted one captain addressing the most important captain of the guard. Paffiwr smiled courteously upon him, and she accepted her chair being pulled out for her to sit on. Tundryl remained standing as the waiter approached, and he ordered for them both confidently and without hesitation. If Paffiwr had had any intention of interrupting, she would have had to speak over him.

He had the opportunity to glance at her expression as he did so, and he saw what he believed to be a faint blush on her cheeks. She certainly did not seem upset that he had taken the initiative in this way.

After the waiter had gone, he turned back to her, still standing, and said “I trust, my dear, that you will find this satisfactory?”

He was surprised and delighted when he realised that she could not bring herself to meet his eye. “Uh,” she said, “Yes. Yes. Most... most satisfactory.“

“I am glad to hear it,” he said. “Captain, it has not escaped my attention that more and more of your tasks have been turned over to me. I have no objection to this, in fact, I welcome it. However, I am aware that my regiment has less manpower than yours and that your word will be taken in preference to mine by the Empress.”

Captain Paffiwr still did not meet his eye, but she nodded. She seemed to shrink in upon herself.

“Let me be quite clear, Captain,” he said, “I am prepared to take on these additional responsibilities. But it seems that you are no longer willing to take them. And if that is the case…” He paused.

“Captain, look at me.” His voice was firm. After a moment she lifted her head and met his gaze. “Captain, if you can't take responsibility, I must take charge. And I mean this about your regiment, but most especially, I mean this about you.” He let that hang there for a moment, savouring the mingled excitement and fear in her eyes, and then he stooped from his standing position to kiss her and felt rather than heard her moan of assent into his mouth.