Chapter 29

The next day was very busy for James and Dusty.

They had pleaded weariness and didn’t leave the hotel room as far as anyone other than Mica and their new team of mercenaries were concerned. Their guards were kept busy turning away a horde of people wishing to see Hasid. Some were not happy that they were being rebuffed.

While waiting for lunch, Dusty lifted her brace and said, “Rasp, report to me with the team, please.” Three minutes later, she had the six mercenaries standing in front of her. “I have presents for you all but they do come with strings attached.”

“Make your offer, Princess,” Rasp replied.

Dusty held up a ring with a large diamond and two other yellow crystals in a low, triangular mounting. The thick band had identical symbols etched either side on the band. The script they would find in the band said, ‘I serve all the People’. It was etched on the medallions that the wizards had too.

“If you choose to accept these items, you will be classed as Novice Mages. You all have some ability and the ring will enhance your strongest ability. If you accept, the strings are; the killing of innocents will not be tolerated and if the ring leaves you because of wrongdoings, it will send you mad.”

“You can still be mercenaries as far as hiring out to protect others but not to assassinate. The compensations are that you will be a very effective unit, healthier and live longer. Together you represent all six of the magical talents and a group of even single gemmed Novices working to support each other can be devastating to non-magicians and even other low order mages and novices.”

Rasp looked at his people and chuckled. “I’ll get strung up if I say no, so who is what?” Rasp asked Dusty.

Slick rolled his eyes, “Duh, Rasp! And you’re supposed to be the brains of this outfit.”

Arc sniggered, “I have a feeling our working names have a lot to do with our talent don’t they Princess?”

Dusty shrugged, “Hey, I didn’t pick your names, you lot did.”

Lilly said, “Nature, that’s me, and Puff has to be the Physics’ Novice.”

“Yep, and I’m the Energy Novice and Steel has to be the Earth one. That leaves Slick as the Psychic as we all knew and the Boss will be Lore,” Arc replied happily.

“So, are all of you in?” Dusty asked, knowing damn well they were and not surprised that they knew as much about magic as they seemed to.

Rasp knelt, “I’d be honoured to serve you, Princess Wizard.”

The others also knelt and repeated what Rasp had said, so Dusty handed out the rings and gave them a new Mad to go with the ring. She told them about the entity, the spell book in the Mad, the mini wand and told them to practice in safe places.

“I’m going to teach you two spells for Sleep and two for Immobilisation. Some of you will be better at one and others at the other. Each action had two spells, one to do and one to undo,” she told her attentive audience.

“They are always the first options to stop someone. It is often better to hit with immobilisation and then sleep if the person is in an unsafe location. You can use the sleep spell without immobilising them first if they are safe.”

They all nodded, as they saw the advantages of learning these spells. They would be great for infiltration as well as stopping someone who planned to attack them or their principal.

Dusty spent ten minutes with them and wasn’t surprised with who was better at which spell. She hinted they should always try to work with their opposite and they got why straight away. Puff replied, “I like these spells, much better than having to kill guards who are just doing their jobs like us.”

“Can we still take out the baddies?” Rasp wanted to know.

“Yes and no, we would prefer you cuffed them, rather than kill them,” Dusty replied and explained about cuffs as she handed each of them a small backpack that had ten cuffs in each. She then explained they could keep a lot of crap in the packs and that they disappeared as if they weren’t wearing them. The packs would appear when they needed them to and they couldn’t be stolen.

The team loved them and knew they were a gift they would be thanking her for, many times in the future. Dusty sent them back to their duties and to check that the conference room was ready for the meeting the following morning, while James was instructing the real waiters to put most of the food near Dusty’s plate.

The mercenaries smiled at James as they left, having heard of Dusty’s appetite.

The conference room was quite noisy on the morning of the meeting.

The fact the Minister for Finance was missing from the meeting was not lost on James or some of the other people in the room. Hiram had, in fact, turned up early for the meeting. His enquiries to the staff had borne no fruit the day before. They all simply said they hadn’t seen the royals and no they hadn’t they come down for meals, and no, they didn’t hear of any disturbances since they had been in residence.

No one had been willing to tell him anything he wanted to know. The staff had been warned by Mica of course, not that it was necessary. The staff had all heard the story of what the Princess did to people who pissed her off.

Considering how sweetly she had thanked the waiters at dinner and again at breakfast and told them to thank the chefs and kitchen staff, they decided the stupid woman who had annoyed her had deserved her retribution for picking on a hormonal, pregnant woman. They all agreed that the bitch trying to hustle Donia’s husband in front of her was also crass.

Rather than make them fear her, Dusty had inadvertently pulled all of them to her side. The male staff were already in love with Donia so she couldn’t do anything wrong anyway. James standing up for his wife and treating her like the princess she was had also put him in the staff’s good graces. Most of the female staff all thought he was gorgeous and his chivalry was to just to sigh over.

James didn’t turn up to the meeting until five past nine. He hadn’t intentionally been late. It was Dusty’s fault for getting in the shower with him after breakfast. Saying no to Dusty sucking on his cock was not something he did well. He still had a grin on his face when he arrived in the conference room.

He stayed invisible when he blinked down to the room. He lounged against the podium and watched the crowd. Hiram was fielding the questions and pretending he didn’t know what was going on. He had gotten the Finance Minister to call everyone about the meeting that Mica hadn’t called. Hiram’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t a popular choice a far as overthrowing the new Shah.

James detected three primary factions in Fiaz’s little government. The one faction that interested him the most were the men who were speculating about what, whoever was going to be in charge, was going to do about the lack of new slaves.

Dusty was also doing her reconnaissance thanks to the spy cams they had installed during the night. She was watching the smaller group that stood away from the other two groups. She suspected they had their own agendas and that they didn’t bode well for the others and possibly them.

She’d had some trouble finding out much about these men the day before. They seemed to keep out of the limelight and most of what she could find suggested they were well respected. She had noticed that Saji had joined that group and seemed well received by them. She alerted Rasp to keep a close eye on them.

Hearing a voice in his head had startled him a little but the Princess had warned him that she would talk to him in this manner when he was on the job. Rasp was still a bit shaken by the turn of events the day before and his new abilities.

The new connection he felt with his team was awesome and he had to smile at his good fortune.

Rasp’s team had all met while serving in the Iranian Army.

They hadn’t liked the way things were done and as soon as they could, they got out. They decided to hire out as mercenaries because other legitimate jobs were few and far between on Earth, in the Middle Eastern Nations.

These nations hadn’t changed much in three thousand years. They were still fighting each other for whatever reason they could think up. Tribal, religious and racial factions were still strong. They still had most of the wealth in the hands of a few. Bored rich people still thought the masses were there for their benefit and amusement.

Rasp’s crew had agreed to a twelve-month contract to come to Terra with Vizier Ali Shayegan to protect him in his new position as Finance Minister for Fiaz’s new nation. He had offered good money and fringe benefits. Rasp’s team soon found that the good money was a joke, as they just about had to shoot the man to get any money out of his miserly pockets.

They were not impressed with the fringe benefits either. Ali had a harem of twelve young women and four male slaves whom he’d had gelded so they couldn’t get the girls pregnant. When Rasp was told that he and the boys had to be de-balled, before they could use the girls or live in the house, they had nearly walked out on the man.

Ali finally agreed to pay them regularly at the agreed rate to stay. He grudgingly organised a tiny two-bedroom prefab house built for them on his land. They weren’t allowed in the main house when he wasn’t there and basically, they just did walks around the property if they weren’t guarding him. The bastard even made them pay for the furnishings for the house, the generator and its upkeep.

They shared the two beds depending on who was on duty and who wasn’t. Lilly slept with Rasp and Slick, and Puff slept with Arc and Steel. The girls also had sex with the guys they slept with, so things weren’t too bad as far as Rasp was concerned. To be honest, he would rather screw Lilly than the poor bitches in the main house.

Ali was a real bastard. In the first six months, he hadn’t managed to get even one of the girls pregnant. He got himself tested after that and found out that while he had his balls, the geldings were just as likely to get the girls up the duff as he was.

Since he couldn’t do the deed, he started pimping the girls to his friends and clients. He had kept two as his favourites but the rest were just fodder. Those bastards treated them like shit and so did Ali. They even used the male slaves much to the disgust of Rasp’s male crew members.

The girls got a bit pissed that the boys didn’t seem to care about the female slaves until they found out about the males being used. They had withheld favours until the men agreed the women got it a lot worse since they were beaten and violated in every orifice and not just with a cock.

The crews’ contract was due to end and they were not planning to renew. They had already found a flat in town and were thinking of going into law enforcement since Fiaz had finally worked out his city was a den of deviates. Ali hadn’t been happy when Rasp had told him they were moving out at the end of the week.

When Ali had asked them to do this one last job before they left, they had agreed. The bonus was worth it as they could buy one of the new houses in town with it and working for the Cops; they would be set for a while.

Rasp made damn sure he got half the payment up front. He was suspicious of the deal when Ali hadn’t quibbled as he normally did when money was owed. Slick had also been worried about what was really going on.

They had roughed up a few of Ali’s rivals in the last twelve months, so the request to get rid of these people wasn’t that unreasonable. Ali got pissed that they wouldn’t just kill them. He had been even less happy to meet Rasp’s price for murder, even if they would probably get away with it in this town. They’d had enough of senseless killing in the army.

Now, they were Novice Mages and they just might have to rethink what they were going to do.

The crowd was getting restless.

James and Dusty had watched them for ten minutes before he decided they had fretted long enough. The longer he took in showing up, the faster they were plotting to kill each other. “Greetings,” he said in English, knowing they all spoke it since it was considered the universal business language.

His sudden appearance shocked many. Not the least because he looked exactly as he had before he had been declared dead. Hiram scowled when James appeared. He had noticed that Ali wasn’t here but his guards were. He wondered what Ali was up to.

He didn’t know that Ali was currently chained to the bed in his dungeon or that he had been raped by his four male slaves while the female slave had committed other indignities to his body, his castration being the least of them. The property had already been signed over to them and his money, minus the Mercenaries share, had been transferred into the joint accounts for the house.

Once the ex-slaves had exhausted their frenzy of revenge, Ali was destined to live in the dungeon alone and poorly fed for the last month of his miserable life before he managed to strangle himself using the chains he wore. He wasn’t missed by his previous slaves at all. The few associates who did eventually ask after him were told that he had gone back to Earth.

Meanwhile, Hiram’s fretting about what Ali and his guards were up to didn’t alleviate his fear, his high blood pressure or his stomach ulcers. His hatred of Hasid didn’t abate either.

Once the crowd saw James, they settled down and took their seats.

James told the people in the room that he was the new Shah of the Merat Kingdom and that his father was dead. He ignored the questions tossed at him and told them to settle down. He then explained that all he wanted was for them was to present him with their name, what they were employed to do and then give their reports. They were to keep to the salient points, not waffle and keep the report to less than five minutes.

After pointing to his first victim to the podium, he took a seat in the front row to listen. He didn’t follow a standard meeting procedure. Once the person on stage had exhausted their information, he just pointed to the next person and told them to get up and speak. He ignored any questions from them. He’d simply glare at them until they continued with their reports or got off the stage.