by Eileen Wilks
Lily had an urge to ask Isen what Brenda’s favorite color was, what she’d gotten for Christmas last week, how old she’d been when she lost her first tooth. He might know. He seemed to know everything about every member of his clan. “So she’s been here since May?”
“No, she went off to college in September, but then the events at the Humans First rallies made her unsafe there, so she returned here. At first she seemed to resent that, but I don’t believe she does now.”
Being spoken about instead of to had the expected effect. Brenda went from a simmer to a boil. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with anything! What do you care where I lived when I was little?”
“That’s how investigations are,” Lily said blandly. “I ask all sorts of nosy questions that, in the end, turn out not to lead anywhere. But every now and then one ends up mattering a lot. Who’s your boyfriend here?”
Brenda blinked. “What—I don’t know what you mean.”
“Would you rather I said lover? I suppose it does sound more adult. You have a lover here, don’t you?”
That didn’t make her hide behind her hair. Instead she gave her head a proud little toss, shaking her hair back. “None of your business.”
“It is, you know. Especially if he isn’t Nokolai. And he isn’t, is he, Brenda?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t hide, either. Her head stayed up. Her eyes defied Lily to pry anything out of her.
She was so very young. Lily didn’t make it a question this time, but a statement of fact. “Your lover asked you about Cullen Seabourne’s workshop.”
Brenda didn’t answer, but Rule did. Briefly his ears and tail drooped. He nodded.
She shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t get it.”
“He means,” Isen said, “that she felt guilt over your question.”
A nod plus drooping tail…“ ‘Bad dog’ equals guilt, huh?”
Rule snorted. That could mean anything from laughter to disgust, but this time probably meant something along the lines of “Don’t be ridiculous.” Lupi did not like to be compared to dogs.
And she was sidetracking, big-time. The next part would be…tricky. She thought she knew what Isen was doing, but if she was wrong, things were apt to skip the handbasket and go straight to hell. She looked steadily at Brenda, letting the silence drag out. Finally she spoke quietly. “Brenda. Look to your left.”
More out of surprise than any desire to obey, she did, then frowned at Lily. “What?’
“See all those people sitting over there? Over forty people came forward when Isen asked. Forty people who aren’t worried about talking about who asked them questions about Cullen’s workshop. You’re worried about it, though, aren’t you? So worried you won’t admit you discussed it with your lover. You’re protecting him. You think you won’t be hurt, but he might be.”
“He didn’t talk to me about it,” she said quickly. “It was someone else. I didn’t want to get h-her in trouble, that’s all.”
She was such a bad liar. Lily didn’t need Rule’s slow headshake, not with the way the girl stumbled over the pronoun. “You think he needs protection. You’re afraid he asked too many questions. That his interest wasn’t simple curiosity.”
Silence.
“Do you think I can’t find out who he is?”
“It wasn’t him. I told you that. It was a woman. She’s not connected to the clans at all. I sold her the information. I was angry, like Isen said. I didn’t like being here instead of at university, so I-I sold the information.”
Rule was shaking his head.
“Stop,” Isen growled. He walked up to them—no, it was more like a slow stalk, ending three feet from Brenda. He didn’t say a word, but slowly she turned to face him. Slowly her expression changed as defiance faded into fear.
Isen continued to stare at her as he boomed out, “She has confessed! She admits she sold the information about the workshop to a human. She has betrayed Nokolai willfully, knowingly—”
“No!”
The slim young man whose shout answered Isen stood among the Laban contingent.
The young man started toward them. The man to his left grabbed his arm. “Hank—”
He shook his clanmate off and kept coming. “She’s innocent,” he said loudly. “The Chosen is right. She hopes to protect me. I was the one who sold the information, not Brenda. She had no idea I would do that.”
Lily released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d been right. This is what Isen had been going for—not poor Brenda’s bungled confession, but the one they were about to hear.
Of course, things were still going to be tricky. He was lying, too.
TWELVE
HANK Jamison was twenty-seven—an adult, by lupi standards, but a very young one. He was tall and slim and beautiful, with large, dark eyes and an extra helping of the physical grace all lupi possess. He looked like a Renaissance poet who moonlighted as a swashbuckler. He should have been banned from all contact with women under the age of forty.
Hank insisted calmly and definitely on his guilt. His Rho had nothing to do with this, nothing at all. He’d been greedy. He’d wanted money, and someone—he refused to say who—had paid him well to give up Cullen’s secrets. He asserted all this without a quiver of emotion.
Hank’s physical control was good, and he was smart enough to clam up once he’d made his announcement. Rule smelled no guilt on him. He wouldn’t, though. Hank was lying, but Rule wasn’t his Lu Nuncio, and he was trying to protect both his lover and his Rho. No guilt for him there.
An hour after Hank’s confession, Lily was on her way back to Isen’s home with Isen and Rule, who was two-footed again. Cynna had left to get Ryder from the tenders; Cullen had left for his workshop to run some kind of test. He was still obsessed with why his ward hadn’t made flames whoosh up. And Hank was in leg-irons at the guard barracks. He wasn’t locked up because there was no way to imprison someone at Clanhome. Lupi didn’t believe in that. Step far enough out of line and you might get dead, but you wouldn’t be locked up.
Brenda Hyatt would be formally removed from Nokolai. The ceremony of expulsion was different for a clan female than it was for a lupus since the mantle wasn’t involved, but it went by the same name: seco.
Lily had checked a few things with the other witnesses before Isen dismissed everyone. As she’d suspected, Brenda hadn’t been the only one Hank had talked to about Cullen’s device. Just the most cooperative.
As they were leaving the meeting field, someone brought Isen his phone. He used it to call Leo, the Laban Rho…who wasn’t answering. As they neared Isen’s house he put his phone up without leaving a message.
“Does that make him look more guilty, not answering your call?” Lily asked.
“Leo never answers my calls right away.” Isen opened the big front door.
“Doesn’t he have to answer when you call?”
“He has to obey.”
Rule filled in that sparse answer. “It’s as you and Cynna were discussing earlier. Laban is subordinate, but their Rho is very much a dominant. Leo will call Isen back—I assume you left a callback number?” he added to his father.
“Of course. I believe I’d like coffee. Would you two care to join me?”
“Sure,” Lily said. Might as well. She wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. “So he’s playing some kind of dominance game?”
Isen headed off toward the kitchen, so it was Rule who replied. “More a way of balancing dominance and status. The two are connected, but they aren’t the same thing. Leo’s status is subordinate to Isen’s, but he’s dominant, so he prefers to be the one calling, not the one called upon. Isen tolerates this, and generally Leo is careful not to test that tolerance. He calls back quickly. You may have noticed that Isen didn’t leave a message.”
“That matters?”
“I could leave a message for Leo, if I were calling as Lu Nuncio. If Isen did, it would send the wrong signal. As if
their status were equal.”
Lupi status games made her head hurt. “You think he’ll call back, though. Even though he must suspect it has to do with Hank. He has to wonder if he’s in a lot of trouble.”
“Leo is sometimes foolish, but he’s Rho. His clan is potentially at risk. He’ll call.” Rule sank onto the long sofa that faced the fireplace. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees.
Lily settled next to him. She could hear Isen talking to Carl—a dispute over which of them would make the coffee. Isen might be Rho, but the kitchen was Carl’s territory. She turned her head to look at Rule.
He was weary. Weary and worn and barely aware of where he was, and that wasn’t like him. Sure, it was past midnight, but Rule was a regular Energizer Bunny. He never needed much sleep. So whatever was eating at him, it wasn’t physical…which left plenty of other possibilities. It might fall to him to carry out whatever sentence Isen passed on the Laban Rho.
But what she saw on his face didn’t look like dread of an ugly duty. It looked more like bewilderment.
She was missing something.
“You suspected Laban all along, didn’t you?” he asked abruptly.
“If money was the motive, yeah. They fit.”
“But Vochi’s the one who cares about money.”
“No, Vochi understands money.” How to put it? “Subordinate clans have to re-up every time they have a new Rho, right? And Vochi’s Rhos have been doing that for hundreds of years. Same decision, over and over. They must like things the way they are. Why would they risk losing that? They’ve got money. They know what it can do and what it can’t. While Laban…” She shook her head. “They’ve been subordinate to Nokolai for less than three decades. Not long in your eyes, maybe, but plenty long enough to see that having money has helped Nokolai. That money can mean strength. They may not understand finance, but they understand strength. They had a lot more motivation than Vochi.”
Carl emerged from the kitchen. He was wearing pajama bottoms. It was the first time Lily had had any inkling there was a lupi anywhere who owned pajama bottoms. “Eat,” he said with his customary brevity, and handed Rule a plate with two thick sandwiches. He looked at Lily. “Need anything?”
“Ah—no. No, I’m good.” She hadn’t Changed twice the way Rule had. Lupi needed fuel after Changing. She should have thought of that…but so should Rule.
Carl headed back toward the kitchen. His room was off it. Isen passed him, bearing thick pottery mugs.
Lily frowned at him. “What’s going to happen to the Laban Rho?”
“Undetermined.” He handed her one fragrant mug. “Until I speak with Leo, I won’t make that decision. Though I know part of it. He will attend Brenda’s seco.”
That was fair. Leo ought to witness the consequences of his actions. “That won’t be all, though.”
“No.” Isen set another mug on the floor by Rule, who was working his way through the sandwiches—not as if he wanted or even tasted them, but as a chore he needed to finish quickly. Isen took his own coffee to the armchair set at right angles to the couch. “I can require his death, of course. That would be simplest and possibly best.”
“You seldom settle for simple.”
“I won’t discuss this with you, Lily.”
His voice was as pleasant as it was implacable. She believed him. She sipped coffee and thought. After a short silence she said, “Do I get to question Leo?”
Isen’s eyebrows lifted. “Of course you would ask that. I should have expected it. I am not at my best tonight. Things keep happening that I didn’t anticipate, but should have.”
Rule set his empty plate on the floor and picked up his mug. “You anticipated better than I did. So did Lily.” He glanced sideways at her. “You guessed, didn’t you? That’s why you assured me I wouldn’t have to kill anyone tonight. You knew what Isen was doing.”
“I hoped I did, and yes, that was part of it.” Women had to be protected. That was the lupi code. In spite of that, Isen had convinced them—even his son—that this offense was grave enough and he was angry enough to order death. But maybe only the lupi had feared this. Brenda hadn’t been afraid for her life, had she? Hank had. He’d confessed to protect her.
Rule was watching her. “You were going to arrest people, weren’t you? Me?”
“I was thinking more of protective custody. If Isen decided someone needed to be dead, I’d take her in custody. That was a last resort, though. It would’ve been tricky to pull off without Isen feeling forced to go all Rho on me.”
“Tricky?” Isen smiled faintly. “That’s one word for it.”
Rule looked at his father. “You expected Lily to do something along those lines, though. That’s why you kept her nearby—so I’d realize you weren’t going to order an execution right away. I didn’t get the message, though. I wasn’t…I don’t understand why I didn’t see it.”
“You were distracted,” Isen said. “That is my fault. I didn’t think about what calling on the Leidolf Rho in such a situation might do.”
Lily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t have guessed,” Rule said. “I didn’t understand what was happening myself at first.”
Isen shook his head. “I should have seen the possibility.”
“I still don’t,” Lily said pointedly.
Isen sighed. “Rule has spoken to me about a certain frustration he’s felt about being Rho to Leidolf. He experienced the mantle, but not the clan.”
She gave Rule a quick glance. “Yeah. He’s mentioned that.” Not the way Isen put it, but he’d talked about frustration. Rule had been raised Nokolai. That clan had his heart, while Leidolf had been his enemy until that mantle was forced on him. As Rho, Rule meant to do right by Leidolf, but he wanted that more with his head than his heart. “It bugs him that he doesn’t feel connected to Leidolf the way he thinks he should.”
“Not a problem anymore,” Rule said dryly.
“No, clearly it isn’t.” Isen paused, sipping from his mug. “I didn’t expect you to hold your heartbeat separate. I should have. You couldn’t allow Leidolf to be mastered by Nokolai.”
“No.” Rule’s expression turned inward. What he found there wasn’t giving him joy.
Lily looked back and forth between the two men. “I don’t understand.”
Isen rubbed his beard. “Perhaps you didn’t know that a Rho can control his clan’s heart rate. I was keeping Nokolai’s elevated—a somewhat risky option, but I have the experience to handle it. This made Nokolai viscerally aware of my anger and created expectations…they knew something would be required of them. Something drastic. Our guests would have been aware of the massed heartbeat of Nokolai, increasing their sense of isolation and risk.”
“I get it.” Lily nodded. “Brenda didn’t think she was at risk—not physically, anyway. I had my doubts about that, too, but all the lupi seemed to think you might order her killed. The heartbeat trick made them believe it.”
Isen nodded and sipped. “Unfortunately, I was genuinely angry. I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I believed. I didn’t realize Rule could hold his heartbeat separate from my calling. To do so, he had to be Leidolf.”
“Um…that’s a problem?”
Isen tipped his head to look at Rule. “How much of a problem do we have?”
Rule continued to lean forward, looking at the floor, not his father. “I don’t know. I’m in control, but…not comfortable.”
Lily wanted to shake answers out of one or both of them, but Rule’s distress was too vivid. He wasn’t avoiding answering. He was consumed by something going on inside him, something that Isen didn’t need named. Maybe something that wasn’t Lily’s business…no, not that. If Rule had a problem, she needed to know. But maybe she wasn’t the one who could help. “This is a Rho thing?”
Rule turned his head to look at her, straightened slowly, and took her hand. “I’ve been Leidolf Rho for months now. I’ve gone back and forth between Rho to Lei
dolf and Lu Nuncio to Nokolai with no real difficulty. That’s no longer the case.”
“You must have noticed,” Isen said, “that Rhos do not enter the clanhome of another clan often. If they must visit for some reason, they don’t linger.”
“I thought that was a security thing. Or status. Or both.”
“Certainly those are part of it. But neither the Vochi Rho nor the Laban Rho would have any security or status concerns about guesting here, at the Clanhome of their dominant. And yet they aren’t here.” He stopped and looked at her, waiting for her to work out what he meant.
Isen could be annoying that way. Just like Grandmother. “Friar can’t eavesdrop here,” she said slowly, “for the same reason the Great Bitch can’t use her super-duper clairvoyance to watch what’s going on at Clanhome. Friar’s clairaudience Gift comes from her, and her magic doesn’t work here because clanhomes have some kind of connection to the mantles.” She considered that a moment. “Is it anything like a sidhe lord’s land-tie?”
He smiled to congratulate her, but it was a weary thing, bereft of his usual mischief. “I don’t know enough about the land-tie to say for sure, but the differences seem to outweigh the similarities. Sidhe lords draw power from their land; I don’t. They are said to sense the lives contained on their lands. I don’t. But Nokolai claims this land. The mantle is part of that claiming. It reacts to certain kinds of power, which is how I would know if someone touched by her entered Clanhome.” He paused, looked at Rule, and finished softly, “Just as I know if the Rho of another clan is here.”
“But we’ve been here since October!” Trouble pulled Lily’s shoulder muscles taut, as if she might need to punch someone. As if that could help. “What changed? Is it just because Rule used the Leidolf mantle to keep his heartbeat separate?”
“That’s part of it.” Rule said that much, then stopped. He seemed to be hunting words, so she stayed quiet, giving him room. “You know about the agreement I made with Isen after the Leidolf mantle was forced on me.”