^^ Lady Jaime ^^

— Reginald —

I somehow knew that Benjamin had asked me to light the house on fire as a diversion; like he didn't want me to see what he did inside. Still, knowing that, I let him. Not because I didn't want to know what he was doing, no; -I had a very clear idea of what he was doing, thanks to my amplified hearing and the men's horrible, choking gurgles as he slit their throats in their sleep or crept up behind them and ripped their heads off were all together a thoroughly sickening experience,- but because I knew I didn't yet have what it took to kill men who hadn't attacked me, the action so much like murder as to be inseparable.

I puked privately on the roof, shivering, and then leapt to the opposite roof, landing with only a soft crunch of tiles, -a respectable amount of silence, I thought, as the sound wouldn't carry far,- and began mixing the Hellfire in a large vial, instead of the smaller ampules I usually used.

When the sounds stopped, barely six minutes later, I wondered for a moment where Ben was, but then he scared the piss nearly out of me by speaking, right behind me. "They are dead. The plans and any papers and coins inside are here." A soft thump, as he dropped a bed-sheet on the roof, full of crinkling papers and clinking coins.

I shivered as his total silence made my spine tingle, and threw the vial at the roof of the building, where one of the remaining casks was sitting.

In a moment, it ate through the cask, and then exploded violently, spreading the HellFire all over the roof, where it caught the trails of alcohol left behind, and then raced at once down the walls and into the open windows, which I realized I hadn't seen him open or trace alcohol into.

"My father would beat me for how badly I am observing, today..." I sighed.

"It was while you were puking." Ben shrugged, and then picked up the bag and me, shrinking slowly to his human form, and leaping to the other side of the building as the guards appeared. Our way out thus freed, he set me down, and we ran across the rooftops, but I was confused by our trajectory, as we landed near the Vatican.

"What are we doing here?" I asked, glancing about at the few guards in sight, all looking off to the west, where the bright bonfire of the warehouse was illuminating the city in that area.

"The spy in the Pope's Offices. We will hunt down and deliver him his Judas Priest." Ben explained, and then sniffed deeply, and leapt cleanly over the walls, from the roof. The guards, none of whom were paying attention, didn't even look up. He turned back, and opened his hands. "I'll catch you, come on!"

I took a few steps back for room to run, as it was a thirty foot leap at least, and then sprinted forward, pushing off as hard as I could and nearly flying across the gap, overshooting Ben's position.

A soft bubble of laughter filled my lungs and throat, as I realized mid-flight that my Full Abilities had come in, at last; whether or not my father viewed my entrance into the Order as questionable, clearly the entity we drew our powers from felt otherwise.

Ben clapped a hand over my mouth as he caught me suddenly, and frowned. "What's so funny you'd laugh out loud over a guard's head?!?" He hissed.

"I'll tell you later." I shook my head, still smiling, and we secreted away as the guard muttered about laughing ghosts and oddly-colored fires in the city.

A distant series of explosions, as the fire reached the alcohol-filled storehouse next to our murdering ground, provided the distraction necessary to slip into the upper floors of the chapel, and we followed Benjamin's nose, until he began walking in circles.

I nodded when he frowned at me, and pulled out a small tooth, -taken from a Roman Oracle's bones, long dead,- and dangled it from my fingers on the silver chain it occupied. "Invenimus Iudam." I whispered, breathing on it.

It began rocking of its own volition, and pulled until it was pointing straight at a nearby door. I nodded and kept it out, but around my neck, and drew my dagger, easing the door open enough to peek through.

The Cardinal who had come in when the Pope called, during our meeting, was packing, filling his case full of silver and gold and silks, his room bare of them now that he'd burgled them all.

Ben stepped in, silently, and closed the door behind us.

When the Cardinal turned to leave, the large chest in his hands, he croaked in fear at the sight of Ben leaning against his door, cleaning his claws with his bone dagger. "Hello, Judas. Going already?" He smirked darkly, and laughed softly when the Cardinal dropped the chest hard, likely intent on making some noise, but I caught it with a reflexive lunge, and gently laid it on the bed.

"Well, now, Judas, we can't have that." Ben continued, shaking his head disapprovingly. "I suppose I will have to warn you to think twice, and very carefully at that, of any further attempts to warn anyone of our presence... we just want information, and we would never harm a priest, not even a Judas Priest." He crossed his heart with the dagger, marking his top layer of his exposed skin and scraping a cross.

The 'assurance' had the Cardinal as white as a ghost, and shivering in fear. His urine was a stark scent, which made my nose crinkle, and I felt oddly happy I didn't have Ben's nose; it must've been much worse, for him.

"Now let's talk, Judas, yes? I am a Lord if the Order of the Red Cross, and I have to inform you that betraying the Pope... well, we don't like that." I shook my head, and sat on the chest, patting the bed. "Take a seat." He didn't move, and I took a more serious tone. "Sit down."

His legs gave out, and he sat weakly on the bed, staring bleakly at the claws on Ben's hands. "Волк - мужчина... убей меня, если хочешь, но сделай это быстро, я не мышь, которую надо пытать!" 'The Wolf-Man... kill me if you must, but do it quickly; I am not a mouse to be tortured!'

I took a moment to translate in my head, and frowned. "He doesn't speak English. I will speak to him in Latin, then."

"Or Russian." Ben shrugged, and spoke in that tongue with a deft clarity and fluency that had the priest gasping in surprise.

He was quick to eliminate suspects, gather information about collaborators, asking the right questions in the right order to force the semi-unwilling man to accidentally give answers he otherwise wouldn't have, and all without touching the man.

When the priest began to refuse to speak, Ben simply shifted into his full Beast-Man form, and growled softly in his face. Questioning went even smoother, afterwards, and he even offered up information, without being asked. Soon enough, his eyes were bloodshot and wide, as if he was drunk on the fear that he was emitting into the room. His adrenaline was so potent that even I could smell it, with my only-slightly-enhanced nose.

I heard a skip in his heart-beat, and frowned. "You're giving him a heart-attack, Ben, stop for a moment."

He shrugged. "I've gotten what I needed. You will tell the Pope all that you have done, and you will give up all your collaborators directly to him and any he appoints to the task of rooting out the cancer that you've brought into the house of God. Is that clear?"

The Cardinal nodded fervently, unable to speak any more.

"Good." Then Ben crossed the room and roared in the man's face so loudly and suddenly that I hadn't even seen him move, but the sound deafened me for several moments, like the crack of thunder mixed with a lion's roar.

The man's eyes rolled back, and he passed out, thankfully not dead, though it had been close.

Ben's claws scratched 'JUDAS' into the wall, and then grabbed the chest, shoving it into the sack, and pulled me out, leaping out the nearest window.

I followed, still blinking the blurry vision away, and we snuck out of the compound as the guards surged into that wing of the Vatican.

—

The doctor stared at the bed-sheet-turned-sack, and the blood speckled over it, and hummed slowly. "So, your meeting with the Pope went... Well, I hope?"

"Indeed it did. Then we found Russian spies spying on the pope, and eliminated them, also pointing the Pope towards a Judas Priest in his inner circle. This sack contains all the papers and maps and battle-plans located inside the enemy stronghold, which we burned down to cover our tracks. No one knows it was us." Ben nodded seriously, as if he hadn't just admitted to mass murder.

The doctor nodded, equally calm and collected. "I imagine you got a bit of your rage out on these Russians?" He asked, opening the sack and sorting the papers into stacks on a clean desk.

Ben grinned slowly. "It was quite rewarding, yes. And I did not eat any of them, which I feel I should be commended for."

"Indeed, that was my next question. Good restraint, most impressive." The doctor nodded, and set a map on the table. "Oh dear..." he muttered, reading the troop movements, which were written in Russian, and therefore nearly useless to me. I'd never gotten the hang of their letters.

"What's wrong?" I asked, stepping up to the desk.

"Movements from the back and sides, a rear-pincer movement on the European and Ottoman forces that are trying to breach the wall... but how they're getting out of the city, it's odd... they seem to think they can sneak their way out through the sewer, which exits in the riverbank, here." He tapped the map, and nodded slowly. "A bold move, but easily managed, if you know it's coming." He scrawled a perfectly detailed version of the map on a thick sheet of vellum, adding the runes which would allow it to be sent through the fire. A scrawled note in a northern language followed, and he threw it into the fireplace, watching it vanish.

"To whom did you send that, if I may ask?" I frowned.

"A friend, whose ship is across the bay from Sebastopol. He will have the lanterns lit, in his cabin, and he'll get it to the naval presence there. Hopefully it's not too out-dated to be of use... now, I will make of this what there is to find, Ben, you should go eat, and eat well. I take it from your destroyed clothes that you shifted, and so you'll need the energy. Off with you, and sleep as much as you can; we are off to England now."

Ben paused. "Not to Alexandria?"

"No, the majority of packages here are bound for England, so our interests align, for now. And I'm procrastinating; Gerald tells me that if we put in to Alexandria, we'll be in port for several months, and I don't like the sound of that." The doctor sighed, and started sorting the stacks of papers more thoroughly, tossing the valuables into a discarded pile in front of the desk.

"So... we go to Alexandra when we return?" I asked slowly.

"Yes." He sighed, and then gestured to the pile of riches. "If you wouldn't mind, Reginald, Take those to Mehmed to have a look at? They may be of some use, telling us who funded these spies, and either way they belong to the Treasury, now."

I nodded and held my questions and hoped my disappointment didn't show on my face. When he dismissed us, I gathered the items up in the bedsheet and chest once more, holding it in front of me and making my way down to the lowest deck, where the treasury and, by necessity, Mehmed's quarters, were located.

I tried to push from my mind the small voice that taunted me for knowing exactly where his quarters were, and knocked on the door solidly. "It's Sir Reginald, the Doctor sent me with some riches to be looked through and perhaps identified?" I called through the door.

There was a rustle of fabric, and another, and I blushed as I realized he must've been in bed, and someone was with him. After a moment, the door whipped open, and I flinched at the view of a barely dressed Jaime, whose shirt was only buttoned once, and covered literally nothing except perhaps her shoulders and back.

"Well hello, Reginald..." she purred, and her nails scraped my cheek gently.

I frowned at her, shaking my head to clear it of the image of her body, and looked past her at the large form of Mehmed, then abruptly wished I hadn't.

While Jaime was a stunning beauty of a woman, and I found myself unable to resist no small amount of interest in her perfectly feminine form, all my interest in her was purely the essence of her ease of movement, her grace and feminine empowerment, and the way she was looked at by the men on board; hers was the ideal form of a woman, in my opinion, but nevertheless it filled me with an unexplainable rage, deep in my core.

Mehmed was different.

My mouth dried up instantly, as he stood up, dressed only in a sheet wrapped around his waist. My eyes unwillingly followed the lines of his muscles, the hair on his exposed skin, and then the very visible bulge under the scrap of cloth. I dropped the bag to the ground with a crash, and sprinted away in horror as I registered the understanding dawning in Jaime's eyes, and in Mehmed's, as well.

I didn't know where I was running to, but I found myself in the Captain's room, huddled behind her small desk in a ball.

I could hear someone calling my name, but I covered my ears, and pressed my forehead to my knees. 'Where will I go now? I was almost outcast, in the Order, when they knew, and now the place that was my new Home? Jaime is an irreverent gossip, everyone will know by morning, not just Ben... I suppose I could stay in Rome; no one would look for me in Tuscany, or Damascus...'

"Reginald? Why are you under my desk?" Adrian hummed aloud, closing the door behind her.

I started, and then stayed silent, unsure as to why I was here. I couldn't have answered if I tried.

After a few moments, a strong hand darted under the desk, grabbing my scruff, and dragged me out from under the desk. She held me up to her face, raising an eyebrow, and then sat in the desk chair, placing me in her lap.

When she let go of my neck, I flinched at her raised hand, but she casually ignored it, petting my hair and ignoring me entirely, beyond the gentle touch. She opened a book, the ship's log, and made a few notes, letting me breath and slowly control my heartbeat.

A few minutes of silence followed, interrupted only by her turning a page on her charts or making a note with her quill.

She didn't ask any questions, at first, but she began speaking softly about the ship's finances, -vastly improved by our recent captures,- and her own sizable placement within the Funds, the English Government's Treasury-Bank. She explained, as though I didn't know already, it's many uses and the inner workings she was privy to, as a private business-woman, and the owner of a Ship.

"-and my funds, placed into the greater 'Funds', are used by the Government to do business on Great Britain's behalf, and therefore come back greater than before; this increase is levied out as 'Interest', a sort of 'thanks for donating'. Then when I need my monies, I can withdraw them, and any accumulated interests as well." She nodded, and closed her accounting book. "Now that we've had a moment to breath, perhaps you can articulate why you were under my desk?"

I flinched, and had to force myself to relax again. "It was... an overreaction to something trivial, I suppose."

She nodded and pet my hair again, gently pulling it all back into a single handful, and began braiding it, like a Frenchman's hair. "I see." She hummed, and didn't say anything else, but something in the tone asked politely for more information.

I shifted uncomfortably, beginning to move out of her lap, but I found I couldn't move, as I was seated atop her thighs, and she was quite insistently gripping me around the waist.

"I haven't finished your hair." She said softly, but with authority, and I sat still obediently. She nodded firmly, and began again, brushing my hair with her fingers to make braiding more easy. "So. Tell me what happened." Her tone held no question, but a simple demand.

Something snapped, and I found myself letting tears fall, shameful, horrid tears, which I tried to dry with my sleeves before she noticed, but she didn't say anything, not even when I sniffled. After a moment, though, she pressed a rag to my nose, and spoke in that same, oddly authoritative tone. "Blow."

I was baffled by how easily she seemed to manage me, when even I couldn't do so, but I obeyed without question, and she nodded. "Good, then. Now, Speak." That same tone took on a sharp edge, and I found myself again afraid of reproach. She would react differently, surely; her reaction to Benjamin's awfully blunt statements clearly showed she had no issue with it, nor did she find it disgusting, as she clearly believed she could still marry Benjamin, even with his outspoken proclivities.

She gave me a look, as I glanced at her, and with that one, calmly stern expression, my mouth opened and a floodgate disappeared, rapidly explaining everything that was wrong and every reason why; anecdotes I'd never shared with anyone fell from my treacherous lips, experiences and desires I'd always been ashamed of, things I'd never told anyone except the one person I'd trusted with my secrets; how he'd died protecting me, and I'd found out the hard way all the things he'd been shielding me from for years, after everyone had figured out my secrets.

She listened silently as I spilled my soul into her ears, for what felt like hours, and then when I had nothing more to say, a deep tiredness overtook me, and I fell asleep in her warm and kind embrace.