<div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c4/a2/eb/c4a2eb3622a5fd5f4149b8e094a22fa3.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Danae Vine-Lott (https://ddb.ac/characters/13428552/TAFm5K)<br/><strong>Location: </strong>Room Д, Cosmopolis Club, Martira Bay<br/><strong>Wearing: </strong>Nothing at all<br/><strong>Tagging: </strong>Open<br/><br/>Full dark - no moon, and for light only the embers of the fireplace in her customary room on the second floor of the Cosmopolis Club, secreted behind a black curtain.  Candles trembled and flickered, shadows drawn long on the wainscotted walls.  Danae lay in the crimson silk-upholstered bed and watched the shapes of light and darkness swirl on the paneled ceiling.  She thought the laudanum was beginning to wear off, with the fine control of her extremities returning.  She reached for the chilled cup of sweet wine on the bedside table: strong, acrid, and flavoured with artemisia.  Hardly a Dementlieuse vintage, but to work in the grim, grey domain of Darkon was to accept a certain loss of creature comforts.<br/><br/>"Stoke the fire," Danae ordered without once shifting her gaze from the shadows writhing and fornicating on the soot-smeared ceiling.<br/><br/>Linde murmured a complaint and rolled out from under the covers.  Linde, of course, was not her real name.  The girl was an elf - fuliginous hair all in braids and of a ghost-white complexion - with inscrutable, solidly violet eyes.  She was listed in the catalogue of girls as 'the Banshee'.  She lived up to the name: vocal when being fucked, coldly pragmatic, and absolutely depraved.  A peddler of gossip, opium, and secrets.  Danae fumbled for her cup, and it slipped from slack fingers, clattering to the ground.<br/><br/>"By Ezra, Moll, wipe up that bloody mess," she snapped and sat up straight in the bed. The laudanum was still in her, and her hands hand failed her.  Linde crouched wordlessly to stoke the embers - lithe, muscled frame crouched like a cat preparing to leap on a rat.  She still wore her scarlet stockings, and the bottoms of her feet were stained with soot.<br/><br/>Moll groaned, rolled out bed, fat breasts jutting out over her curved belly.  She was the only Mordentish whore in Martira Bay - her father had been a gambler who had indentured her upon realising that he preferred to roll dice than maintain his daughter.  The broad-hipped strawberry blonde scrambled to comply, soaking up the spill with a waschloth.  "Ye needn't be short with me, Captain.  It's sack-wine, it won't stain."<br/><br/>"Damn the laudanum," Danae exhaled, "Hells know what they put in.  Tell Lady Kazandra I'll pay her ten craniums more a night if she can find me purer opium.  This just won't do."<br/><br/>Linde rose from the fireplace that had since begin to sputter to life.  Laudanum did not dull senses and nerves in her the same way it did for humans.  She could take a strong anodyne, and smoke opium all night, and be none the worse for it. "Lady Kazandra says we need to wait for a new shipment, Captain.  From Sri Raji."<br/><br/>"I -" Danae paused while Moll busied herself wiping up the spill, thick thighs and bountiful, freckle-sprayed arse bouncing, "one day, I think might go tiger-hunting there.  I used to enjoy hunting, on the moors, you know, back in Mordent -" she trailed off.  That memory was a peculiar one.  She could see herself on a dreary, overcast day, gun in hand, chasing after stags, or grouse, but the voices and faces of the other riders with her were flat, featureless, like porcelain, with only two black voids were eyes should be. "Linde, would you sing for us?"<br/><br/>The elf-girl had proffered Moll another starched washcloth.  "Certainly, what would you like to hear, Captain?"<br/><br/>"Do you know any Elfish songs, in you own tongue?"<br/><br/>Linde shook her head, "I told you, Captain," she said, her smile ever enigmatic, "I was orphaned.  I was brought up in Martira Bay.  Can hardly remember a word of Elfish."<br/><br/>"Quite," Danae sighed, "that had slipped from mind."  She had an<em>arrangement</em>with Linde.  Baykur had told her when she first took charge of the<em>Mercy</em>,<em>When you take to the sea, any mariner will tell you first to find a whore in your homeport - a clever one who with better fortune might have taken to some higher calling.  Pay her handsomely, and never demur from her charges.  She will be eyes and ears for you, and those you will need in Martira Bay.</em><br/><br/>Linde slipped back into bed, each motion fluid like quicksilver.  Danae brought her into her embrace, kissed her, nuzzled her throat, and traced the sharp relief of her collarbone with bared teeth and wet tongue.  With sea-spray calloused gripped the girl's tight arse, drawing her close, "If one day we met again, and I did not remember you, would you tell me?"<br/><br/>Linde kissed Danae's silver hair, cooing softly when Danae's fingers slid inside her cunny, "I suppose, Captain, that depends.  If you'd forgotten me, there must have been a reason."<br/><br/>It was almost dawn by the time Lady Kazandra came calling, rapping softly at the chamber door.  The fire had burnt out, and a crack of sickly light filtered through the boudoir curtains and onto the varnished floor. The ship transiting her newest wards had arrived in good time, no doubt thanks to a good wind in the Sea of Souls.  Winter was drawing close, and the dead calm of summer would soon be a distant memory.  All that, however, did not concern for the moment.  She had one hand wrist-deep in Moll's straining arsehole, while easing the other into Linde's gaping cunny.  Moll was squealing, pushing her hips back, frantically frigging herself.  Linde kissed her cries into muffled moans. Lady Kazandra always chose the most<em>inconvenient</em>times.<br/>