Such a treasure...

Seejay came over to us and kissed me on the forehead. I beamed at him and stood up so I could snuggle better and get another kiss.

“We’re going to be moving out in very short order, what should we do with the prisoner?” he asked after our mutual snogging.

“I’ve named her Dolly,” I said. “She’s got useful information, including stuff about who our avatars are, or were. I—I think we need to keep her.” For some reason, it felt strange to be offering advice to Seejay, as if I really weren’t allowed to do that.

“I can’t feel my arms and my tail hurts,” Dolly complained. She tried to look helpless and innocent, but her barbarous nature showed through. She made me think of a dog that has been caught knocking over the garbage can.

“What did she know?” Seejay asked in English.

What I wanted to know was whether we could trust her, but I told him her story of a Greenie attack on the original party who I had been part of and how he and Hote were wearing reborn bodies of members of her old party. “Rollo and Stief? Stief not Steve?” he asked me.

Dolly’s ears had pricked up. “Rollo?” she said. “You act like you don’t know me and I saw you dead with your jaw gone.” She shuddered. “I don’t know what is going on?”

“How much English do you understand?” I demanded.

“A few grains,” she said in English which is how you would express that thought in Red Martian.

“I suspected as much,” said Seejay in English.

He squatted down beside her. “We don’t remember you,” he said flatly in Martian. “But we need some help getting out of here, and the rest of your party is dead. Are you willing to join us and follow my orders?”

“Yes, Rollo, of course,” she said in Martian.

He stared at her. “Call me Seejay,” he said. “We can’t trust you yet, but unless we just cut your throat, I guess you’re going to go with us.”

“Don’t leave me alone,” she whimpered. “The lizards come at dusk and dawn. There are greenies here and a group of bandits looking for the reward….” She glanced at me.

“Tell us,” he said. “Hote, come listen to this. Trike, can you hear?”

“Ah can hear her fine,” said Trike. “If Ah get close she gets hysterical.”

“Okay, keep watch. We’ll hear her story, and then we’re ready to leave.”

Hote knelt on her other side. “There was a lot of loot in there,” he said, motioning toward the room where Dolly and her crew had been holed up.

“This is Dolly, Hote,” said Seejay. “She thinks you’re someone named Stief.”

“Not Steve? I don’t think I look like a Steve—or a Stief,” said Hote, smiling.

“Steve, Stever, Stief, Steverama, Steverino, Steverissimo,” said Trike chuckling.

“You couldn’t live with a greenie spear through your chest,” Dolly said. “You had to be dead. Ow,” she added. “My arms hurt, my tail hurts.”

My own tail cramped up in sympathy then crept into my hands for a reassuring squeeze.

Seejay stared at her and Hote gave her a look just as hard. “So what’s this story?” he asked.

Dolly glanced at all of us, flinching a little when she looked at Trike. “I want to be untied first—before I talk. I think you will kill me when you’ve heard it all.”

“That bad, huh?” said Trike.

Seejay grunted. “You want us to trust you, so you’ll have to trust us. We’ll untie you when we’re ready to, after we’ve heard the story.”

Dolly burst into weeping and whimpering again, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her tears. The laughter felt cruel, and the tears felt like yielding to manipulation. The noises I made in trying to control my reaction were pretty funny themselves—if I could have objectively listened to them.

I noticed that both of our guys had new guns and Seejay had a new shirt with pockets. Hote had a hat and a good set of boots, too. “I wanna hat,” I heard Trike murmur. He’d been the only one of us that habitually wore headgear, preferably an Angels baseball cap, but where on Mars would we find a hat to fit his huge head now?

And the mental image of that ferocious green face under an Angels cap set me off into gurgles and yawps again. The others glanced at me, but all I could do was shrug until I got control of the laughter. After a minute, I managed to say, “I’m okay.”

“Keep calm, no hysterics,” Seejay told me, and I nodded.

As Dolly wound her whimpers down, squirming a bit, Seejay said, “You’ve got a few minutes,” in English. I didn’t think there was a way to express such a small division of time as a minute in Red Martian, but she seemed to understand.

She sighed and stopped crying. “If you decide not to take me along, just kill me,” she said. “Don’t leave me alone to be eaten by greenies or lizards or raped by bandits.”

Hote and Seejay both nodded, and I turned my face away.

She told her story simply, and in Red Martian since we all understood that and it was easier for her to find words.

Rollo and Stief had put together a group to go looking for a lost caravan carrying a treasure from Basil Ares, ruler of Aresopolis, to Captain Clemens, chief of Sky Haven. She didn’t stop to describe more about where or what those people or places were, assuming perhaps that we would know. Aresopolis was what she actually said, but Sky Harbor was what came out in English in my head.

The treasure they went seeking included such things as fine machinery, sapphires, expensive wines and a magical bed-slave who knew both the science and magic of pleasure. And she looked at me.

Yikes. I stayed calm. Still, the fur on my tail fluffed out like a frightened cat.

Dolly was one of the guides hired by Rollo to lead the expedition across the desert to the area where the caravan had apparently disappeared, near the ruins of Uth Praebek, she gestured at the walls around us, located on the shore of the Forgotten Sea. Again, Uth Praebek was her words for the ruins, and Forgotten Sea was my English translation of the Red Martian name for the area. Sea? I wondered, but didn’t interrupt her narrative to ask.

After a brief run-in with a group of cowardly bandits lead by a man named Eksander (Zandro?) Dolly’s group had followed the sounds of battle and come out behind a group of greenies attacking what looked as if it might be the remnants of the caravan guards. And here she paused for a moment to glare at Trike. Our pet giant quirked an eyebrow at her.

She continued her story. The newcomers joined the fight, taking the greenies by surprise and eventually driving them off with heavy losses. All of the caravan party were dead plus the leaders and more than half of the rescue expedition. Dolly told this flatly, compared to her earlier histrionics when she thought she might be killed or eaten.

While dealing with dead bodies and treasure, her party had split in two, squabbling over the treasure. The smaller group had been driven off and not heard from again, and they had gotten away with very little.

Seejay and Hote traded glances at this point, and I remembered the group that had jumped them while they were out scouting and had provided the first weapons and clothes for our team. There had been at least one survivor from the ambushers who had escaped and was presumably still out there.

For a deserted ruin, Uth Praebek seemed a trifle crowded, what with lizards, caravaners, greenie raiders, bandits and who knows what else. Uth it occurred to me was half of a Green Martian word meaning something like “lost,” or even better, if less grammatically, “losted.” A place that had been deliberately lost and its exact location forgotten on purpose. Abandoned, we might say in English. Praebek was just a name as far as I knew, I had no clue to any other meaning it might have.

At this point, Seejay stood up. “Enough for now,” he said. “We have to start moving. Cut her loose, Hote, but don’t give her any weapons. Trike, come with me, we need to talk.”

While Dolly told her tale, I had continued messing with the jewelry I had taken off her. In particular, I had wrapped the gold-and-jade web belt around my waist and tried to get it to fit. I had to suck in my tummy and stretch the net a bit but the sliding clasp finally closed and I felt a surge of magic go through me, centering somewhere inside me.

It felt deliciously sexy, and I watched Seejay walk away with some regret on my part. I licked my lips in anticipation of some future encounter between he and I.

Hote had efficiently removed Dolly’s bonds and left her sitting there, rubbing her arms to get the circulation back, while he moved off to help Seejay load packs onto Trike’s back. The big guy was doing his centaur impression to make this easier but suddenly flinched, almost knocking the other two down.

“What the hell?” asked Hote, staggering back from the wall.

“Don’t get so close to my armpits with those straps,” Trike complained. “I’m still ticklish, and I’ve got twice as many ribs!”

I giggled a bit at this. Trike was fierce-looking; it was funny to think of his weakness being his ticklishness. My tail joined in expressing amusement, pointing at Trike and wriggling like a fish.

Dolly watched me, half-smiling. “You are braver than I to wear so much of that enchanted jewelry. When I discovered that I could not take the items I put on off, I stopped putting more on.”

I shook my head. “I had no trouble taking them off you?” I said, making it a question.

She nodded. “Only you, apparently. No one else could remove them from me. I guess because they belonged to you before… before you died.” She looked a bit uneasy. “How is it that you are alive? And Stief and Rollo?”

I shrugged. “Magic I suppose. But none of us remember being these people you name.” Maybe I shouldn’t tell her anything else without talking it over with Seejay. Instead, I asked a different question. “Did they have a name they called me?”

She nodded. “They called you ‘Yonee,’ just as Rollo does when he is not calling you that other name. Also, one of them called you something else, but he did not speak English, and I had never heard the word before.”

Yonee? The very name Hote had come up with, seemingly at random. A name that turned out to be a word in an ancient language. I felt a tingle go all the way down my spine to the tip of my tail.

She stood. “Yonee is the usual name for a woman who has been sold as a bedslave,” she said. “It’s not really a name, more a purpose.” She smiled at me, “Let me help you put the rest of your jewelry on. Once you’re wearing it, no one can take it away from you.”

“Okay,” I said, not really sure if I should but wanting so very much to do so. I discovered that while futzing around with our captured jewelry, I had already put on several more items, mostly toe and finger rings and two that seemed made to fit my tail.

“Stick out your tongue,” Dolly said, and I did so. She quickly put the double-ended tongue stud through the tip of my tongue, sideways. It didn’t hurt at all, seeming to slip through the flesh. That felt so strange. I could feel that it curved a bit, so the two jeweled ends pointed almost forward on either side of the tip of my tongue. I wondered if it would be any trouble while talking.

“Every time you say something, the men will see the jewels in your tongue. It will drive Rollo mad with desire to have you,” said Dolly.

I shivered deliciously, liking that idea despite myself.

Dolly continued working. Hoops several inches across went through my nipples, again seemingly passing through my flesh without pain. Other jewelry went through my eyebrows, the tops and tips of my long pointy ears, my lips, nose and cheeks and several in even more intimate places. I could feel them down there, several big solid rings and a slender one with a moveable jewel in my most sensitive part.

I felt dazed from the impact of multiple magics and any movement at all sent sensation from my center directly into my brain. I swayed with desire to have Seejay come and make love to me right then, and I almost cried out.

But Dolly said, “Shh. Be quiet until we are finished, then you can go to him. His lust will fill you and you will….” She trailed off, looking at me with a peculiar expression. “You’re purpose will be complete,” she finished.

Two pieces were left. The net collar, next to last, went on easily without any of the tightening and straining to fit of the other net jewelry. A delicious feeling of warmth spread down from my neck to my nipples with their new adornments. It felt as if my breasts were filled with warmth and longing.

Last of all, Dolly held up the headband and placed it on my forehead. The clasp would be in back, buried in the curly mass of my black hair. I anticipated her closing of the catch with a quiet giggle but was unprepared for the feeling of illumination that the last piece of my lost jewelry brought.

I felt as if a strong light shone through me, making me glow in coruscating waves of red, white, green, blue and every other color too. I didn’t think I was really glowing, but I did feel as if I could.

My tail reached up and booped me on the nose, and I did some more giggling.

Then a voice I had never heard before but somehow recognized spoke to me without making a sound.

“There you are, Yonee,” it said. “It’s been a bit of trouble finding you. Now don’t move until I figure out where you are and can send someone to collect you. That’s a good girl.”

At the same time, Dolly screamed, and Seejay and Hote opened fire on a horde of attacking Green Martians.