Page 24 of Guiding Desire
Senlas rubbed his eyes. “I’ll go make coffee then. I don’t like anyone touching my grinder.”
“A…joke?” Orrey asked.
Senlas froze, his cheeks blushing faintly. “Yeah. A joke. Been practicing them.”
“I see,” Orrey said and made himself smile for Guardian Senlas’s benefit.
Senlas put a hand on Orrey’s shoulder. “Just sit back down. Unless you want to check out the rest of the place?”
“No, I just wanted to let you know. I didn’t mean to call anyone over.”
Senlas’s dry chuckle filled the living space. “Kitten, follow my words. You don’t really have the power to make Col do anything. It would be one Covenant-blessed gift if you could.”
“Of course,” Orrey said, feeling once again drawn into a conversation to which he had no road map, and anything else he could have said might have insulted a superior, which Conduit Coldis was.
Orrey, with nothing more useful to do, sat back down on the cloud couch while Senlas went about grinding more coffee beans. They had to be wildly expensive, and yet he was using more of them, was using them as if he didn’t mind or care.
“Do you protect import convoys?” Orrey asked from his spot.
Senlas looked up, his blue eyes sparkling in the sunlight that filtered in through the windows. “Convoys over distances that long are rare. If you’re thinking about coffee, that is?”
Orrey nodded.
“That distance would be like”—he looked up as if he were doing mental math—“About 6.6 mega-meters. They use dirigibles for that, or planes if it’s hub-city to hub-city. Dirigibles will mostly have C-class Guardians, some D-classers, the odd B. Planes have Ds, if that. They go way too high to make an easy target.”
Orrey’s jaw dropped, and he asked, “Have you ever been on either?”
“Both,” Senlas said. “Passenger dirigible for when I visit family on the West Coast, plane to get across the Mid-Sea once. We did a joint training and exchange type thing with Lagoda. You know where that is?”
“Yeah. The South Blue Continent. They speak a weird dialect over there, don’t they?”
Senlas smirked. “That’s one way of putting it. Cuprea’s claim to the clearest High Speech is pretty solid, I’d say, but everywhere else in our sector is pretty similar. Lagodans do not exactly embrace High Speech, but they’re proud of their dialect. If you ask them to slow down or repeat themselves, I swear to fuck, they get into it even more. The actors from South Blue you see on streams have to mostly conform to High Speech, and it’s really only barely a taste of the real thing.” His eyes narrowed with a smile. “Next time we go, you’re coming along so you can form your own opinion.”
Orrey had no words. He’d dreamed of leaving the city like many did, but the dangers beyond the wall and the cost made it prohibitive. Dramas that took place elsewhere had been his secret escape when he’d been in school, satisfying a curiosity he knew he’d only ever satisfy if he moved for work and left his family behind, not an option.
And now, here was an invitation, extended with such ease. He sagged back into the couch cushions, and Senlas seemed fine with the conversation ending that abruptly.
A chime rang through the living space soon after.
“Come in,” Senlas said, still busy with the coffee.
The door opened, given permission by his voice command to do so, and a group of people filed in.
Orrey recognized Coldis, the tawny-skinned Conduit, although today, his rich brown hair wasn’t styled as neatly, and he wasn’t wearing a suit. He really seemed to like flower patterns, going by the wide shirt in purple, yellow, and pink he wore over tame black pants. The group of three with him were clearly Guardians, just going by their towering size. The one walking next to Coldis brightened the moment he laid eyes on Orrey.
“Hey there! Remember me?”
Orrey stood. “Guardian Karmine. Of course.”
The rest of the group zeroed in on Orrey, and it took everything he had not to take a step back. Their intense focus made Orrey feel like a big predator’s favorite food.
Coldis rounded the couch while the others kept their distance, and said, “Hounds, you wear that better than I ever did.”
“That’s because he has muscle mass in all the right places and never tricked his AI into buying too much candy,” Senlas said from the kitchen. Orrey felt heat rise unbidden to his cheeks and wondered what about the Guardian’s praise did that.
“You little—I know all your secrets, Senny. You shouldn’t forget that,” Coldis said and stepped closer to Orrey, took his hand. “Let’s introduce you. Taros is the one with the purple hair and a fashion sense that comes close to my own in quality.”
“Hey, beautiful,” the slimmest of the three said, his wavy purple hair almost reaching his shoulders. The plainest thing about him was the skintight black T-shirt. His pants had a star pattern of red on black going, and the white scarf loosely wound around his neck had red flowers all over. Taros in no way resembled the sober type of Guardian Orrey would have expected.
