The Peninsula

The Fiction and Poetry Archive of Liana Mir and scribblemyname

Morning Wait

May
13

Skylight woke before morning had fully come. The room was dark, and Math’s warmth and the beating of his heart lay under her head. His arms had come up around her in the night, and she blinked a moment at the sensation of being held.

She had things to do before they flew out to the next mission. There was always last minute mission prep slotted in, and she had always risen early for practice and training, but for a moment she ignored that in favor of this feeling, this warmth, the solid sense of being loved.

Morning would wait.

Count

May
06
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

They count coup: confirmed kills, unverified kills—which covers the halo of supposed inhabitants or workers within a given area when they destroy en masse—and sometimes when the weight gets too heavy, they count things they aren’t required to.

“Five confirmed lives saved. Seventeen unverified.”

“Ten confirmed saved.”

They pass the tea back and forth, alcohol warm on throats too young to be drinking it, and it almost washes away the taste of blood in the backs of their mouths.

Because they don’t care about those numbers. They care about mission success rates, intelligence gathered, acceptable cost.

“Mission success.”

Success

May
06
This entry is part 8 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

They add up successful missions over time, beads on a string, but though somewhere in Department headquarters someone tracks absolute numbers, Team 95 only tracks percentages. Ninety-nine percent mission success rate, with the closest hewing to planned acceptable losses across the Projects.

They control the flow of Baganechi raiders around international trade in the region, build intelligence networks, and exploit them ruthlessly, knock problem leaders out of power, manipulate chosen leaders in.

It’s bloody, it’s violent, they’re all too familiar with working in shadows and dealing in bodies and lives.

“Minimize the blood, Skylight,” Wolf murmurs. “Save some of them.”

First / Most

May
06
This entry is part 7 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

“Count me in.” Bridge leans forward.

Ice Queen swaps the coin in his hand for a jar of tea. “First kill?”

“Ah. I don’t remember that.”

“Most memorable then,” Arc substitutes with hard eyes. They count them all, adding them up like stones on their backs, in the backs of their minds.

Most memorable was “Saving Augment from that Baganechi over his back.”

Augment scowls, doubtless displeased at the reminder of being thrown from his horse at the caravan, at the old fashioned blade coming down for the kill. “It wasn’t even a planned raid.”

Planned by them.

Bridge drinks.

Head Count

May
06
This entry is part 6 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

Augment does head count when they break from the jet at base. He’s been Wolf’s right hand from early on, and it’s his job to interpret the team’s flags, for good or ill.

When Stream doesn’t smile when another team member glances at him, when Ice Queen moves like her bones ache, when Skylight actually looks like she cares… When ghost memories that aren’t Augment’s drift in from Bridge, when Arc smiles as if she means it, when Math doesn’t immediately bury himself in a book or dossier—

“Wolf.”

She pauses, sighs. “Who?”

An answer. Another down for the count.

Smiles

May
06
This entry is part 5 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

Stream keeps them laughing. They all have a thing, and that one’s his. He supports and smiles and draws smiles from their lips because at the end of the day, they have to survive this childhood and teenagerhood and time spent as a living weapon before they finally come out the other end.

He counts them sometimes, the smiles he draws from Ice Queen that reach her eyes, the number of times Math’s quiet laugh breaks the stillness, the outright chuckles he can coax from Bridge.

At base, each day he claims dozens. On missions, he’s lucky to get five.

Minimal

May
06
This entry is part 4 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

Skylight has made blood of the regions they serve in. The Ogunn block of nations is bloody enough without their team dipping in their hand, but when it comes to mission parameters, it’s Wolf that decides acceptable cost, and Skylight that tells her the options available.

“Minimize the blood,” Wolf says, slowly, thoughtfully, knowing there will be some other cost for even that.

And Skylight minimizes the blood, taking it down from thousands to hundreds to dozens before she digs in both her metaphorical feet and tells her leader, “That is the minimum.”

Fifty-six people dead to achieve their goals.

Blood

May
06
This entry is part 3 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

They’re older, practically grown, when Skylight broods for a moment, considering the dance they’re practicing. She isn’t given to brooding, though he’s heard she knits her brows in concentration or thought quite frequently. But she doesn’t hesitate, until she asks for a goal and the instructor says, “Just dance.”

It’s an outside instructor. He doesn’t realize there’s always a goal—whether seduction, intelligence gathering, or even assassination.

“Sex, blood, and violence,” Math murmurs. The mortar with which empires are made. “Arc is the sex, Ice Queen is the violence, and you’re the blood. And that’s okay.”

They dance for blood.

Comfort

May
06
This entry is part 2 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

It’s not Wolf’s job to comfort her team. It’s her job to take care of them and protect them, which means making sure they continue to do the things they do, no matter how terrible.

But when Ice Queen sits down quiet and somber against the wall of the training area, Wolf goes and sits beside her. Sometimes they say nothing, and she ends up feeling frustrated at her inability to break that emotional wall.

Sometimes, Ice Queen tilts her head and stares with coldly glittering eyes. “Three hundred eighteen.”

Unverified kills. Counting coup.

Wolf counters, “Five hundred ten saved.”

Cold

May
06
This entry is part 1 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

She feels all cold inside. They call her Ice Queen, and there are times when the name truly fits, when they bring down their rules and their punishments and she stares back at them with icy uncaring defiance of a kind they can’t do much with.

But most of the time, she feels aflame with all she wants and all the viciousness she can bring to bear on a mission.

Right now, she’s just razed an encampment to the ground in service of the mission. Right now, she feels cold, like a wind blows through her.

She reports. “It’s done.”

love is the tie (poem)

May
02

love is the tie that binds
the wandering child to its home
and draws me back again no matter
how far the heart may roam

don’t fly away (poem)

May
02

hello, new year!
don’t fly away
so quick, so fast
keep new days near
and hold my hand
don’t disappear
before my work is done

Where Is

Apr
18

She comes in out of the cold, night shadows like wings trailing in her wake, and drops to a crouch beside the fire.

They make room for her, these Baganechi raiders, recognizing the leather bands around her arms, the tattoo encircling her wrist, the icy blonde hair and blue eyes of one of their most infamous members.

“Cherinagos,” one says and hands her the cup.

She drinks with a nod of gratitude. To share in the spoils one has not taken is an honor.

“You are home,” says another.

But she laughs at this, this wandering raider. “Where is home?”

Hates to Kill

Mar
12

Skylight whispers warm, sweet nothings against his ear. Math can barely even make out the sounds into proper language, but it doesn’t really matter. That’s not what he’s listening to.

It’s her heart he hears, her love, the way she doesn’t judge him for taking deep, ragged breaths while he tries to deal with everything he’s just seen and done. Math hates to kill, only does it when he must.

They were told it was a military target, not a civilian one, and for once they hadn’t had time to gather their own intel first.

But they were lied to.

Breath from a Stone

Mar
08

Jaguar kneels over the small sleeping form of her young brother. She strokes one finger gently over his golden brown cheek. His skin is as yet unmarked by the green tattoos her people painted across her own. She is fifteen. He is five.

(more…)

Teller, Taker (Just the Facts, Ma’am Remix)

Mar
01

Word came at dawn of the newly outfitted military station in Westerfields, that vast uninhabited territory between Glaston and Edyll, both kingdoms cities. A quick reconnaissance by interested parties (read: operatives) identified standard and, to them, quite familiar signs of Thorn Republic activity. Once upon a time, those operatives had been the source of those signs, and they knew their own, besides any other departments Thorn might tap to do their dirty work.

(more…)

Small

Feb
20

He felt small and very alone in the quiet woods around him. He wasn’t very big yet anyway, newly born from his power only a few years before, and while he grew, it was at the rate of all the gods—whatever that power sustained.

So even when he’d been walking alongside his older sister, her mouth curling in a bright smile, warm fingers curled around his hand, he’d been a child at her waist and unnamed yet. But there it hadn’t mattered that he was small and she was not because he knew that she wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

The woods rustled gently, creaking branches, wind-blown leaves and underbrush. His sister was the god of finding. If he just waited, she would find him.

He crawled under the brush around one of the trees with low-hanging branches and let it cover him while he waited.

The Approach to Dance

Feb
14

There was a big difference between how Skylight practiced her dance and how Skytouch did.

Skylight was skilled and her control over her body practically perfect. She went through each stretch and leap and twirl and footwork and stance until it was perfect. Then carefully retrained her reflexes to maintain safe combativeness.

Skytouch let herself go completely. She threw herself into the dance, technical perfection offset by genuine emotion and less control than Skylight. She didn’t bother to fix her reflexes after.

“You’ll break an ankle one day like that,” Skylight pointed out.

Skytouch shrugged. “One day, I won’t fight.”

Lost

Feb
07

It was cold out. Winter had never been particularly friendly to the wayfarer in the wilds beyond reach of city or road, let alone to fugitives, fleeing their former masters. Snow had piled deep through every thicket and stretch of the wood, ice coated the river in all but the most rapid sections, and no path was visible in any direction.

In short, Ishalt was lost, which wasn’t a terrible thing in summer when there was food for forage and the only thing that mattered was suitable distance from one’s pursuers. In winter, it could mean life or death to find shelter.

(more…)

You Have Magic

Jan
14

You’re always on the lookout for magical items, especially unusual ones. They’re the lifeblood of your small shop at the edge of the living mall where regular humans only wander by fate or by accident and magic-users congregate on any given weekend. So when you hear that mermaids have returned to the lake in the deep woods, you’re wrapped up in your invisibility cloak that protects against all weather almost before the words are out of your aunt’s mouth.

(more…)