by Sharon Green
Rimen was far too stunned to answer Ophin's question. Lord Zolind was dead, the man they'd all expected to live forever? Zolind was to have been Rimen's ultimate patron, the man who could simply announce Rimen's advancement without anyone trying to oppose it. Now ... for all the good Embisson would be able to do alone, he might as well have died, too....
"I think you ought to sit down," Ophin said with ridiculous concern on his face. "You've obviously had one shock too many, and could probably even use a drink stronger than tea. Come into the study and I'll join you."
"No, thank you, but no," Rimen forced himself to say, realizing that the rumors were true. Anyone who would offer a drink other than tea at that hour... "No, I'm afraid I haven't the time. It's urgently necessary to pass on what I've learned to someone with enough authority to do something about it.... Please give your father my good wishes, and tell him that I'll return when he's up to having visitors."
Ophin agreed with a shrug to deliver the message, then saw Rimen to the door. Once outside and back in his carriage, Rimen forced himself to calm down and do some rational thinking. He had to pass on what he knew, otherwise any unfavorable results accruing from the incidents would be made his responsibility and fault. That meant finding someone who would take immediate charge, someone too powerful to need a scapegoat if things went even more wrong.
Rimen all but pounded his brain, and in a moment he smiled as the obvious answer came. He knew just the man to speak to, the perfect person to shift the burden onto. With Zolind dead the man's power would be tremendously increased, and he would certainly appreciate being the first to learn about what had happened. Lanir might be mindless, Embisson beaten to pulp, and Zolind dead, but nothing was ever likely to harm Lord Advisor Ephaim Noll....
Seventeen
"His Excellency Bron, Lord of Fire, asks a moment of your time, sir," the servant said to Kambil. "Shall I tell him that you're otherwise engaged?"
"No, show him in," Kambil said, putting aside the book he'd been reading. He'd had a marvelous lunch, had taken a refreshing nap, and was thoroughly enjoying the book he'd chosen to read. All that made for a wonderfully mellow mood, so there was no reason to turn Bron away. Now that the man had been properly adjusted, speaking with him was often actually pleasant....
"Kambil, something's going on," Bron answered as soon as he walked in, his expression one of faint confusion mixed with annoyance. "Do you remember the meeting you asked me to attend, the one with Lord Velim and some of the people Velim wants us to make deals with? You said we needed to know what the average man was willing to offer in order to keep his tenants quiet and his income trouble-free."
"I remember that," Kambil agreed. "We also need to question Velim and some of his more pliable associates to find out what the Advisory Board is mixed up in. Lord Ephaim and his cohorts wouldn't have told us without coercion even if they'd lived, and we have to have some source of information. What did you learn from Velim?''
"Absolutely nothing, which is my entire point," Bron replied, dropping into a nearby chair. "Velim never appeared for the meeting, and never even sent word that he'd be delayed. As eager as he was to begin dealing with us, that made very little sense. I waited only a short while, and then I called in my guard commander. He told me he had men who were very good at discreet investigations, so I told him to send some to find out what Velim is up to."
"Which information should prove nicely valuable when we next decide to deal with the man," Kambil said with a nod of approval. "Firsts though, we'll have to let him squirm for a while. It would never do to let him know how much we need his information now that Lord Ephaim and the others will no longer be with us. What did your investigators learn?"
"Not nearly as much as they should have," Bron replied, leaning forward with his fingers locked between his knees. "Velim was supposed to meet the group he meant to bring to the meeting here, but he also never showed up at the dining parlor where they were all supposed to have lunch. The men looked for him at his house, but no one remembered seeing him after he retired last night. They looked for him when he missed breakfast, something he never does, but he was already gone from the house."
"I don't think I like the sound of that," Kambil decided aloud, feeling the frown he'd grown. "Go back and have your investigators see what Velim's closest cronies are up to. If they're having a private meeting somewhere, we need to know about it. For some obscure reason they may have changed their minds about supporting us, and we can't let that continue."
"There's no need," Bron said, holding up one hand. "Those guardsmen really are good, because one of the first things they did after leaving Velim's house was to locate his closest associates. Or at least they called at the men's houses. The men themselves weren't available, and no one knew where they'd gone. Just like with Velim, none of them have been seen since last night."
"That I definitely don't like," Kambil said, rising to his feet in order to pace a bit. "If you decide to plot against someone, you don't do it at a time when everyone, including those you're plotting against, are almost certain to notice. Velim isn't the brightest flame ever to burn, but he's been an Advisor too long to be that sloppy. Something is definitely wrong, but what can it be?"
"I asked myself that same question," Bron replied, his thoughts as agitated as his adjustment allowed. "The only thing I came up with was something rather ridiculous: it sounded as though we'd arranged to remove those men, but without the careful thought which went into removing Lord Ephaim and his group. Their deaths and disappearances can't be linked to us at all, but with Velim's group... It seems as if someone wants people to believe that his group decided against supporting us, and because of that we made them disappear."
"You're right," Kambil decided, stopping to look at Bron. "When the disappearances become public knowledge, we'll be the first ones everyone looks at accusingly. They'll think that all those men agreed with Zolind, and weren't going to allow us to be publicly Seated. But who could be behind a move like that?"
"Maybe Lord Ephaim arranged it before he came to speak with us," Bron suggested, nevertheless still looking doubtful. "It doesn't make much sense considering the Puredan he brought, but maybe he had a private argument with Velim's group."
"Velim and his people weren't powerful enough for Ephaim to worry about," Kambil disagreed with a head-shake. "If he'd wanted them to do something, he would have spoken to them privately and forced them into it. Eliminating Velim and the others would only mean having to deal with their replacements, some of whom might not be quite as pliable. No, eliminating those people is more the move of a fool, someone who acts without thinking—"
"What is it?" Bron asked when Kambil's words suddenly broke off. "Have you thought of someone who might be doing this to us?"
"To quote you, the idea is ridiculous," Kambil answered slowly, his insides beginning to twist. "It should really be impossible, but I have the most awful conviction ... Let's take a walk and find out."
"Take a walk," Bron echoed as he rose to follow. "You can't mean you think Delin's behind the disappearances? Isn't he still completely under your control?"
"Now, certainly," Kambil agreed as he led the way out of his private apartments. "There was a day and a night when he wasn't, though, and we already know what he did with his night. Now I think we need to find out about the day."
Bron said nothing else aloud, but his thoughts and emotions began to take on the same shape and texture as Kam-bil's own: furious, with the urge to commit violence striding strongly to the forefront. That impossible fool of a madman ...
Kambil sent servants to tell Homin and Selendi to meet them in Delin's wing, then he and Bron went directly there. The servants around Delin were pleasant and unconcerned, having been convinced that there was nothing odd about one of the Five doing nothing but eating and sleeping and exercising a bit all the time. Kambil had even gotten these servants to tell him who had been spying for Lord Ephaim, and the woman had also been
adjusted. Now she spent her time on the alert for anyone else who might have outside employment.
"He looks as innocent as a babe," Bron growled, standing over the chaise an expressionless Delin was stretched out on. "Go ahead and ask him if he really is all that innocent."
"We'll wait until Homin and Selendi get here," Kambil responded, also staring down at a Delin who was oblivious to their presence. All rational—and irrational—thought had been denied him, which meant he simply existed in a world without meaning. He would eat when fed and would give a grunt when he needed to eliminate bodily wastes, but other than that the real world touched him not at all.
"What's happening?" Homin asked when he and Selendi arrived together. The two still spent quite a lot of time in each other's company, but Kambil had relaxed the part of their adjustment that demanded complete constancy. Selendi had been growing impatient on the inside, and Homin had become curious about the female servants who let it be known how available they were. The two had performed admirably well, and now deserved to reap some of the benefits which they'd earned.
Kambil explained why they were there, and once they understood what might have happened they became just as angry as Bron and Kambil himself. Now that all four of them were present to hear the answers, Kambil touched Delin's mind and released the necessary portion of it.
"How are you feeling, Delin?" Kambil asked, letting the man pull the threads of his memory together again. "Are the servants treating you as well as they should?"
"No," Delin mumbled crossly, his heavy frown showing how hard he struggled to reassemble his mind. "No one ever treats me as well as they should...."
"Well, we'll certainly have to look into that, now won't we," Kambil said, carefully guiding the man's thought patterns. "But first we need to ask you something. The other day, when we first came here to the palace, you arranged for certain things to be done. Tell me what those things were."
"I arranged to have my parents brought to me," Delin replied, an incredibly ugly smile now twisting his features.
"It was something I used to dream about, something I waited my whole life to do. When they were brought in they were gagged, so my father couldn't simply order me to release them. I still can't keep from obeying him, you know. ... But that quickly didn't matter, because the first thing I had done was—"
"Yes, I know about all that," Kambil interrupted, not about to stand there listening to a rehash of what had made him so ill. "What I'd like to know is if there was anything else you did, any other arrangements you might have made...."
"Just the arrangements for the disappearance of those Advisors," Delin replied, showing no reaction to Bron's wordless growl and Homin's and Selendi's sounds of vexation. "They were fools who lacked the proper attitude toward us, so I had my assassination team cause them to vanish. No clues were left to show what happened to them, of course, so no one will ever know for certain."
"That... assassination team knows for certain, you complete fool," Bron said coldly, calmed again by the adjustment in his mind. "If any of them decide to sell the information..."
"They don't even have to," Selendi said with heavy disapproval. "Once everyone is certain those Advisors are gone, who else are they going to think is responsible but us? We're the only newcomers to high power, so we'll be the natural suspects."
"And once Ephaim and his people begin to have 'accidents' and 'incidents,' they'll all look at us twice as hard," Homin added. "Before there would have been no reason to suspect us, but now .. ."
"That isn't the worst of it," Kambil told them, needing to fight harder than ever before to keep from exploding. "If we intend to run this empire, the first thing we need is information about everything currently being done, and the second is to designate certain puppets for us to work through. With both Velim's and Ephaim's factions gone, most of the information we need is gone with them. The ciphers left on the Board won't know half of what we want, and no one will ever believe that one of them is running things."
"So what can we do?" Bron asked in disgust. "Aside from killing Delin, that is? Having new Advisors appointed to the Board won't help, not without knowing what we're appointing them to do."
"What about the Advisors' secretaries and assistants?" Homin asked. "My father's secretary always knows everything he's doing, sometimes even when he's not supposed to know. And if enough of the Advisors used their assistants to do what had to be done ..."
"That's a good suggestion," Kambil said, getting a slightly better grip on his temper. "Once we're officially informed about Ephaim's group, we can get in touch with their secretaries and assistants. Until then we'll have to start an official investigation into Velim's group's disappearance, following up and making public what Bron's people have learned. But before we do any of that, the Blending has to look into this assassination-team business. I had no idea there was anything like it, and I want the details on it. Once I have those details, we can either adjust or eliminate the assassins who were involved."
"I suppose this is what we get for not letting our predecessors welcome us to the palace," Selendi said with a faint smile. "I wonder how Delin learned about it—and whether or not there's more we should know."
"Obviously I'm going to have to question Delin a good deal more thoroughly," Kambil said with a sigh of annoyance. "I suppose this happened because I was so delighted to be shut of him that I hadn't let myself realize it's much too soon to sit back and simply enjoy life. We're going to have to build a firm, able network to work through, starting as soon as we're told the terrible news about our Advisors."
"Which, hopefully, won't be too long in coming," Bron said, now sounding fretful. "I have this sudden feeling that things are happening which we ought to know about, but which we don't know about because of the large gaps caused in our lines of communication."
"I'm sure the word will reach us soon enough," Kambil said soothingly as he distastefully turned his attention back to Delin. "And I'm also sure that we'll find nothing of any importance that we've missed. After all, with everything else taken care of, what could there possibly be?''
The others made sounds of agreement, Bron reluctant but still in agreement. There was nothing that needed immediate attention, nothing but Delin and whatever secrets he continued to hold. And after he'd drained Delin dry, Kambil vowed to begin looking for a High talent in Earth magic to replace the madman with. But until he found that replacement, he would spend some time thinking of a way to punish the fool for what he'd thoughtlessly done to the rest of them....
Eighteen
Valiant wasn't the only one in the coach who sat without speaking until the last of Gan Garee was behind them. He and Rion had gotten to the coach first, after climbing down the rope outside the window. Valiant still felt annoyed over that descent, annoyed with himself for being so much clumsier than usual. If Rion and his Air magic hadn't been there, he probably would have gotten fully outdoors a lot more abruptly than he'd planned?"
But Rion had been there, and had taken the trouble to disguise his help so that the man steadying the rope never noticed. Valiant was in his debt for that, and had tried to thank him once they reached the fancy, dark red coach waiting for them and were left alone by their guide. But Rion had refused to hear him, blandly insisting that he'd done nothing but help himself. . ..
Valiant rubbed his bristly face with his hand, fighting to keep the coach's smooth motion from rocking him to sleep. There were things he had to say to Tamrissa once Gan Garee was a bit farther behind them—and he had worked up his nerve a bit more. When she and Naran had been brought to the coach, she'd taken the seat beside him only, he was sure, because there was no other. He and Rion had been told to stay in the coach, and Naran, who had been helped in first, naturally sat beside the man she loved. Loved...
Tamrissa had barely glanced at him, and once those two men transferred the baggage to the coach's boot, one of them had joined the coach driver on the box and they'd starte
d on their way. Now Tamrissa sat as close to the window on her side of the seat as possible, looking out and not saying a word. He'd have to be the one to start the conversation, but what could he possibly say? Their relationship was probably over, but if there was the least chance she didn 't want it that way ...
"I think it's time for cautious self-congratulations," Rion said suddenly, also looking out the window. "If I'm not mistaken, that posting house we just passed is considered the last of the city of Gan Garee. That's the way it's done on the road to Haven Wraithside, and the two posting houses appear just the same."
"I'm sure you're right, my love," Naran agreed with a serene smile. "While we were still in the city there was always the chance that we would be stopped, but now that chance is behind us. If pursuit does come from Gan Garee, it won't be able to catch up with us."
"But we might too easily catch up with the convoy," Rion said with a frown after taking her hand and distractedly kissing it. "Did Dom Meerk have anything to say about that, Tamrissa?"
"Alsin told me that the convoy had started out at a fairly good pace," Tamrissa replied after the smallest hesitation, as though she'd been pulled away from her thoughts. "If they have places to change their horses at regular intervals, they may have no trouble staying ahead of us."
"So we, ourselves, may end up pushing our horses or replacing them at similar intervals," Rion said with a nod. "We needn't worry about catching the convoy until we have a plan of action, which I assume we don't have as yet. I, at least, have thought of nothing, so I would be pleased to learn that one of you others has been struck by inspiration."
"Struck by a stick is more like it," Valiant forced himself to say when the ladies simply shook their heads. He shifted his body on the seat, a body which had begun to ache a bit. "And speakin' about sticks, I'm reminded of stones, which I deserve to have people throwin' at me. I still haven't really thanked all of you for gettin' me out of the Razas woman's house when you did. She repels me so badly that it was about to override the only thing she wanted from me, and when that happened I would have paid hard for the failure."