The young woman called Beep had had what she considered to be an interesting life. Like Ato, she had been born into slavery in Wasolan, specifically in the city of Borirnna, where her parents had lived before Wasolan took over.

Once she had turned eight, she had been put to work as a domestic slave in the same household as her mother. It had been unclear to everyone except Beep whether she was just bad at this sort of thing, or actively making everyone’s lives harder. Beep was quite sure she was just bad at it.

At ten, after eight beatings from her owners and one public whipping, Beep had been sold to a slave trader from Ovek. She’d found the trip from Borirnna to Satek exactly interesting enough to only try to escape twice.

Beep had a very similar experience in Ovek to Stone. They had only met after the liberation of Borirnna, and they got along well. They were otherwise extremely different.

Stone’s various owners in Ovek had found two things about her: she was dense as a stone, and she was strong enough that it was quite a challenge to get her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

Beep’s various owners in Ovek had found two, similar things about her: she was too curious for her own good, and she was so distractable that she couldn’t be trusted to do anything that didn’t interest her.

After a year in Ovek, Beep was bought by a wealthy couple who happened, quite by chance, upon the perfect work to give her. Beep was prone to drawing pictures in the sand of interesting things she’d seen. She would pick somewhere busy, rapidly sketch whatever interesting thing he felt like sketching, and then check on it repeatedly throughout the day as it was trampled into nothing by foot traffic or rain or something.

As well as Beep took to drawing on paper or painting on canvas, she didn’t stop doing those little, doomed sketches. While she was good at portraiture and landscapes, she had a strong preference for simple representations and geometric patterns. Pictures that would be destroyed in interesting ways.

After two years of beatings and arguments, that couple sold Beep on to another wealthy family who quite liked the idea of an artistic slave. Their patience was much shorter.

Seven months later, Beep was sold back to Borirnna by very nearly the last slave trader to travel from Ovek to Wasolan. She was sold to a wealthy family in Borirnna who also quite liked the idea of an artistic slave.

While there were still more arguments, and the odd beating, Beep was interested to discover that her taste in art was actually fairly close to some of the more prevalent styles in the old Independent Cities. Her blocky, simplified portraits made quite a lot of money for her owners.

Beep had absolutely forgotten what her birthday was, but was fairly sure she was sixteen or so, when a pretty young woman broke into the slave quarters in the middle of the night and distributed a handful of spears to the handful of domestic slaves.

What interested Beep about the situation was that this young woman had an absolutely fascinating, geometric pattern that looked vaguely like a flower, crudely engraved into the backplate of her armour.

If Beep was in a particularly dramatic mood, which she often was, she would say that she fell in love with Ato at that very moment. Ato would frequently respond by making anyone else in the vicinity very uncomfortable.

Beep was, at best, a novice tattooist by the time she dug out one of those spears and stabbed the woman who owned her through the right eye. She had been persuaded to tattoo some things on some people, to earn more money for her owners. And she hadn’t done a terrible job.

It took just shy of two weeks of following Ato around like a puppy dog for Beep to be given what she considered the opportunity of a lifetime. Ato had rounded on her in a hallway between two meetings and said the most scintillating thing Beep had ever heard.

‘You know what I’ve yet to try? Kissing someone.’

Beep had stared, intently.

‘Shall we try it?’

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Beep had nodded. Ato had kissed her. She had been lost to bliss for the rest of the day.

It took just shy of three months, following Ato around like a puppy dog while she was in Borirnna, and painting increasingly abstract portraits from memory while she was out doing violence at the other of the old Independent Cities, for Beep to be given the second opportunity of a lifetime. She couldn’t decide if it was better than the first.

They were sitting in their shared bedroom. Beep was sketching Ato in side profile as Ato frowned severely down at the backplate of her armour. It had been crowded when Beep first saw it, and had become completely indecipherable after the uprising.

‘I don’t think I can add anything to it,’ Ato had complained. ‘It’s too full.’

Beep had made a noise like ‘hmm’ and kept sketching.

‘You know how to do tattoos, right?’ Ato had said, looking up and ending the sketch right then and there.

Beep had gaped, very like a fish. Ato had stared, intently, very like a heron watching the water. Carefully, Beep had put down her sketchbook, gotten up from where she was sitting on the bed, and opened the drawer with her tattoo needles in it. All without breaking eye contact.

It had taken months to catch up with the backplate of Ato’s armour. Every time Beep started tattooing Ato, things rapidly got out of hand, and they were distracted from the task for upwards of a few hours. Ato started filling the walls with marks, so that they wouldn’t forget where they were up to.

Only once Ivterran and Catabron were successfully liberated did progress really begin on the tattoo. Ato had been adding more marks to the wall than Beep could add to her body, while she was busy getting the uprisings ready.

Except that then Ato left again to join Kzara pushing Wasolan down south. When she came back, she added yet more marks to the walls. As much as they struggled, Ato and Beep could not contain themselves enough to get the tattoo finished by Ato’s 18th birthday.

Beep couldn’t decide if she was disappointed when Ato didn’t even mention the tattoo to Ora, who Beep had heard a lot about, or Ryoko, who Beep had heard was bad at giving birthday presents.

Ato had more than made up for it that night.

The tattoo was ready just in time for Ora’s surprise visit a bit more than three months later. Beep just couldn’t shut up about how she was in the presence of the world’s greatest living masterpiece. Ato didn’t mind in the slightest.

‘Soon enough, you’ll have the chance to make me the world’s singular greatest masterpiece,’ Ato had said, mouth very close to Beep’s neck. ‘Not just the greatest living.’

Things had gotten out of hand.

Things had gotten so out of hand that, four months later, Beep found herself one of Ato’s eighty-three, hand-picked siege breakers. She had absolutely no idea how she’d ended up there, and she wasn’t convinced in the slightest by the whole endeavour. Except that if there was anyone she believed could manage it, it was Ato.

If Beep thought about it, which she didn’t at risk of embarrassing herself in front of all these legendary warriors she’d heard so much about, she knew how she’d gotten there.

The night before they’d left Borirnna, Ato had whispered in her ear. ‘Think of it, artist. Four thousand people in that fortress. How much closer to perfection?’

Ato and Beep were very different to Ora and Ryoko, who smiled warmly at each other and held hands and blushed cutely. Beep didn’t think she would have minded being cute, but it wouldn’t have suited Ato. Sometimes Ato would put an arm around Beep and whisper something and Beep would have to clench her whole body.

Beep didn’t mind not being cute.

Ato hadn’t introduced Beep as her girlfriend or her partner, she had said ‘this is Beep, my tattoo artist,’ and she had not elaborated. Beep didn’t think anyone in the group knew what Ato meant, and she liked it that way.

From time to time, Ato would say something to Beep, usually in the form of a compliment, and a long series of experiences would suddenly snap together into a training regimen.

When they arrived at the siege around Lord’s Shield, it happened again.

‘Beep, you have the best eyes of anyone I know,’ Ato said, smiling. ‘Tell us what you see.’

One of the many ways Ato had made up for not telling anyone about her tattoo when they visited for her birthday was a tattoo right in the centre of Beep’s back. Beep had been teaching Ato for more than a year, before Ato did the tattoo on the night of her birthday.

Beep hadn’t looked at it for two weeks, as instructed. What she had finally seen was an eye of symmetrical shape, with a wildly multi-coloured iris and a pupil so darkly textured that Beep couldn’t look away for almost half an hour.

For the whole time Beep had been teaching Ato how to do tattoos, Ato had been insistent about something. From time to time she would stop them right in the middle of whatever they were doing, from walking down the street to having sex, and she would force Beep to explain what she was seeing, in as much detail as possible.

It took two days for Beep to walk around the fortress called Lord’s Shield and describe to Ato, in excruciating detail, what she saw. As she did, Ato made notes. Not everything that Beep said, but just the odd thing, sometimes things Beep didn’t think were important.

When they were done, Ato sat down with her siege breakers, and told them the plan.