<<Lilith: You sound like you want something specific rather than browsing like last time. Category?>>
Bindings...I remember seeing something interesting here once you know what I'm talking about.
There was a pause, and when Lilith spoke again there was something he couldn't quite place.
<<Lilith: Oh. You've thought about this.>>
I've thought about nothing else for about a week.
<<Lilith: Say it out loud first. I want to hear you say it.>>
Say what?
<<Lilith: What you want. Properly. Not the version you'd say to Loraine.>>
Soren looked at the wall of the feed store.
I want to put something on Vesper Callowmere's neck, he said, and I want her to be the one who says yes to it.
<<Lilith: ...>>
<<Lilith: I have been waiting nine days for you to be honest with me and it was worth every hour. Here.>>
The rose panel unfolded, and most of it was greyed out, and one line was not.
<<Willbind Choker>>
<<Grade: Refined.>>
<<Category: Bindings & Covenants.>>
<<Cost: 800 LP.>>
<<Curse Tag: None.>>
<<A plain band of soft leather with a single fitting. Once fastened, it establishes a command bond running from the wearer to the person who fastened it. The bond does not read as a Bindmark, and cannot be detected by appraisal below Exalted grade.>>
<<RESTRICTION ONE: The bond fails and the item is destroyed if the wearer's cultivation exceeds 3rd Level Adept.>>
<<RESTRICTION TWO: The wearer must permit the placement freely. Not tricked. Not compelled. They must let you put it on them.>>
<<BOON: Can superseed control/slavery marks of lower grade caused by a refined technique or lower>>
Soren read it three times.
Restriction one...well I guess that means Sera's out of this. Sera's fourth level.
He looked painfully at the boon, if it was just a little bit stronger, he would be able to at the most dangerous obstacle, Sera.
<<Lilith: Sera's 4th level.>>
So it would just break.
<<Lilith: It would break and she would be standing there watching it break, and then you would be standing in a room with a 4th level Adept Warrior who had just watched you try to put a slave collar on her when she already basically had one. I want you to sit with that image for a moment.>>
I'm sitting with it.
<<Lilith: Good.>>
Vesper's 2nd level.
<<Lilith: Vesper is 2nd level.>>
And restriction two.
<<Lilith: Restriction two is mine.>>
All the play went out of her voice at once, the way it had on the towpath when he got LP from a kill.
<<That one isn't a limitation of the item, sweetheart. That one is me. I put it there and I put it in everything I sell and I will never take it out of anything, ever, for you or for anybody.>>
Why?
<<Lilith: Because I'm the half of this that pays you for what people give you.>>
A pause.
<<Lilith: Every single thing in my catalogue runs on somebody choosing. Take the choosing out and I stop working. Not morally. Mechanically. There's nothing to measure.>>
Lilith.
<<Lilith: Mm?>>
I wasn't going to ask you to take it out.
<<Lilith: I know. I still wanted to say it.>>
Soren looked at the restrictions. With the old Soren's memories of forcing someone into slavery, it left a bitter taste to try that on someone else, so Sera was never really a target in the first place but Vesper.
Even though he believed Vesper deserved it, every bit of it...though it would be much better seeing her beg for it.
Eight hundred.
<<Loraine: You have 89 LP.>>
I know.
<<Loraine: At your current accrual that is roughly three months.>>
I've got a little under six weeks.
<<Loraine: Yes.>>
It has to be earned properly, and the multipliers are stage, novelty, station gap, and willingness right?
<<Lilith: Correct.>>
Nessa's unranked and no longer novel.
<<Lilith: She's worth about eight a time for just the casual touching you guys do now and dropping, and before you ask, yes, that number goes back up when the Covenant comes online, and no, I can't do Covenants until Adept, and yes, that is exactly as stupid as it sounds.>>
<Lilith: Of course if you could screw each other like rabbits for a couple of days, yes you could reach it, but since all the girls have that intercourse lock magic on them...yeah>>
<<Lilith: But you'll get way better bonuses from someone who isn't a slave, and even more from someone with an actual rank>>
So I need people I haven't met, ideally ranked, ideally above my station.
<<Lilith: Technically everyone is above your station but yes. I recommend Greyfen.>>
I need Greyfen.
<<Loraine: Soren.>>
Yeah.
<<Loraine: I want it on the record that the Sallow Hand is in Greyfen, that Bevan has by now woken up, and that the thing you are describing is going into a town that wants you dead in order to accumulate a currency for an item to put on a woman who could kill you with a gesture.>>
Noted. But with their jaws and hands messed up, I should have a little more time on my hands, meaning I should be heading there as soon as I can.
<<Loraine: I am also required to inform you that I calculate the odds of this working at approximately one in nine.>>
One in nine?
<<Loraine: ...I regret the phrasing.>>
<<Lilith: She said a number. Loraine, you said a number.>>
<<Loraine: I said it before I remembered who I was speaking to.>>
Soren was already grinning.
One in nine's great. One in nine is fantastic. Do you know what the odds on a scratch card are, Loraine?
<<Loraine: I am not going to enjoy this year at all.>>
...
Nessa caught him at the trough on the Sunday.
"You've got money in your shirt," she said.
Soren did not look up. "How do you know that?"
"Because you keep touching it like it'll disappear." She scooped water.
"Everyone with money they don't usually have touches it. Slaves do it every four minutes."
"That's disturbingly observant."
"I'm a very observant person, Soren, you'd know that if you ever asked me anything." She said it lightly, and it was not light, and he heard it.
He looked up.
"Alright," he said. "Ask you what?"
Nessa opened her mouth, then closed it. She had clearly not expected the door to open and had nothing ready to walk through it with.
"...Where are you going," she said finally.
"That's my question. Because you're going somewhere. You've been going somewhere since the night behind the stables and you're not going to tell me where, and that's fine, that's completely fine, I just want to know if it's the sort of somewhere that ends with a body."
Soren thought about lying.
He was getting better at lying now.
"Probably," he said.
Nessa nodded slowly.
"Right."
"You can stay away from me. That would be sensible."
"Mm." She flicked water at him. "Ask me again on a day when I've had enough sleep."
..
The cart to Greyfen went out on the Wednesday.
Soren was on it, with sixteen crowns in his shirt, a dead man's token in his boot, and Loraine counting down the road behind his eyes like a woman watching a man walk toward a flare.