She smiled at Amberdrake who smiled back. "Well, this is three—Silvers, Mages, Services—and I know that Cinnabar can't be spared right now for Healers, so where is our fourth?"
"On the way," Snowstar said promptly. "Zhaneel had Kechara call him."
"Ah." Judeth's smile softened; every one of the Silvers liked Kechara, but Amberdrake knew she had a special place in her heart for the little misborn gryfalcon. Perhaps she alone had any notion how hard Kechara worked to coordinate the Silvers, and she never once took that hard work for granted. "In that case—Amberdrake, is there anything you want to tell us before Skan gets here?"
"Only that I am acting mainly as Chief Kestra'chern in this, rather than as Chief of Services." With no one else to coordinate such common concerns as sanitation, recreation, medical needs, and general city administration, much of the burden of those tasks had fallen on Amberdrake's shoulders. After all, the kestra'chern, whose unique talents made them as much Healers as pleasure-companions, and as much administrators as entertainers, tended to be generalists rather than specialists. Amberdrake had already been the tacit Chief of Urtho's kestra'chern, and he was already Skandranon's closest friend. It seemed obvious to everyone that he should be in charge of those tasks which were not clearly in the purview of Judeth, Snowstar, or Lady Cinnabar.
Judeth raised an eyebrow at that. "Is this an actionable problem?" she asked carefully.
"I think so." He hesitated.
"I think you should wait long enough for me to sit down, Drake," Skandranon said from the doorway. "Either that, or hold this meeting without me. I could always find something pointless to do."
The gryphon grinned as he said that, though, taking any sting out of his words. He strolled across the expanse of unfinished stone floor to the incongruously formal Council table, the work of a solid year by one of the most talented—and unfortunately, disabled—woodworkers in White Gryphon. Since an injury that left him unable to walk or lift, he had been doing what so many other survivors at White Gryphon had done—used what they had left. He'd built the table in small sections, each one used as an example to teach others his woodworking skills, and then had his students assemble the pieces in place here. Like so much else in the settlement, it was complex and ingeniously designed, beneath an outer appearance of deceptive simplicity.
"So, what is it that was so urgent you had to call a Council meeting about it?" Skan said, arranging himself on the special couch that the same woodworker's students had created to fit the shape of a gryphon. "I know you better than to think it's something trivial—unless, of course, you're growing senile."
Amberdrake grimaced. "Hardly senile, though with an active two-year-old underfoot, I often wonder if I'm in danger of going mad."
Skan nodded knowingly, but Amberdrake was not about to be distracted into discussions of parenthood and the trials thereof. "I'm afraid that as Chief Kestra'chern, I am going to have to bring charges against someone to the Council. That's why I needed three of you here—I'm going to have to sit out on the decision since I'm the one bringing the charges. That means I need a quorum of three."
Snowstar folded his hands together on the table; Judeth narrowed her eyes. "What are the charges?" Snowstar asked quietly.
"First, and most minor—impersonation of a trained kestra'chern." Amberdrake shrugged. "I do not personally remember this man being in Urtho's service, as a kestra'chern or otherwise. I can't find anyone who will vouch for his training, either. I do know that his credentials are forged because one of the names on them is mine."
"That's fairly minor, and hardly a Council matter," Snowstar said cautiously.
"I know that, and if it were all, I wouldn't have called you here. I'd simply have examined the man and determined his fitness to practice, then put him through formal training if he was anything other than a crude perchi with ambitions." Amberdrake bit his lip. "No, the reason I bring him up to you three, and in secret session, is because of what he has done. He has violated his trust—and if he had been less clever he would already be in Judeth's custody on assault charges."
Judeth's expression never varied. "That bad?" she said.
He nodded. "That bad. We kestra'chern are often presented with—some odd requests. He has used the opportunities he was presented with to inflict pain and damage, both emotional and physical, purely for his own entertainment."
"Why haven't we heard of this before?" Skan demanded, his eyes dangerously alight.
"Because he is," Amberdrake groped for words, "he is diabolical, Skan, that is all I can say. He's clever, he's crafty, but above all, he is supremely adept at charming or—manipulating people. He has succeeded in manipulating the people who came to him as clients so thoroughly that it has been over a year from the time he began before one was courageous enough to report him to me. Even the other kestra'chern were fooled by him. They couldn't tell what he was doing behind his doors. But I know—I have felt what his client felt."
Skan's beak dropped open a little. "What is this man?" the gryphon asked, astonished. "Some sort of—of—evil Empath?"
"He might be, Skan, I don't know," Amberdrake replied honestly. "All I know is that the person who came to me needed considerable help in recovering from the damage that had been done, and that there are more people who are more damaged yet who have not complained." Amberdrake had been very careful not even to specify the client's sex; while the victim had not asked for anonymity, Amberdrake felt it was only fair and decent to grant it. He spent several long and uncomfortable moments detailing exactly what had been done to that victim, while the others listened in silence. When he had finished—as he had expected—all three of them were unanimous in their condemnation of the ersatz kestra'chern.
"Who is he?" Judeth asked, her voice a low growl as she reached for pen and paper to make out the arrest warrant.
Amberdrake sighed and closed his eyes. He had hoped in a way that once the charges had been laid and the Council decision arrived at, he would feel better. But he didn't; he only felt as if he had uncovered the top of something noisome and unpleasant, and that there was going to be more to face before the mess was cleaned up.
"Hadanelith," he said softly, as Judeth waited, hand poised over the paper.
She wrote down the name.
"Hadanelith," she repeated as she sealed the order with her signet ring. "Can I deal with him now, or is there something else you want to do with him first?"
"Now," Amberdrake said quickly, with a shudder. "Arrest him now. He's done enough damage. I don't want him to have a chance to do any more."
"Right." Judeth stood up. "Skan, would you have Kechara call Aubri, Tylar, Retham, and Vetch, and have them double-time it over here to meet Amberdrake and me?" She handed the arrest warrant to Amberdrake, who took it, trying not to show his reluctance. "I'll be going with you to take this Hadanelith down. This could look bad—I am considered to be the military leader here. A military leader arresting a putative kestra'chern under any circumstances will cause some discontent. Still, I don't want to be seen as being above getting my hands dirty or unfit for service with the other Silvers. And I definitely do not want someone like that loose to deal with later. Hate to saddle you with this, Drake, but—"
"But I'm the one bringing the charges, so I had better be there. It's my job, Judeth," he replied as he wrung the warrant loosely in his hands. "Though it's times like these when I wish I was just a simple kestra'chern."
Judeth snorted and gave him a sideways look. "Drake," she said only, "you were never a simple kestra'chern."
"I suppose I wasn't," he murmured as she, Snowstar, and Skan left the table and the Council Hall.
Hadanelith whittled another few strokes at the wooden bit before setting it down. After some more cutting and rounding—not too much rounding, though, it needed to remain a challenge for the client, right?—he'd add the pilot holes for the wooden pegs and straps later. Carving wood was so much like what he did for a living with his clients, it was natural that he wou
ld be excellent at it. He could grasp the roughness, grip it firmly, and then cut away at every part that didn't look like the shape he had in mind.
Telica, here, was one of his works. A slice here, a chunk taken off there, and before long she'd be another near perfect item. Her mind was his latest work. She was nude, kneeling on the floor, held in place by several lengths of thread binding her neck to her wrists, her wrists to her ankles. The thread was completely normal in composition, which was what made it so amusing to him.
Virtually any effort at all would have snapped them, without leaving so much as a welt; no, the real bindings here were those of his will over hers. The regular training that made her one more of his items held her as firmly in place as any set of iron shackles or knotted scarves. She was one of his carvings, inside, though she didn't presently show so much as a scratch on her alabaster-smooth skin.
Every time Telica came to him for one of her appointments she knew she would be trained and tested in a dozen ways. All of his girls knew this. They could be trapped or tricked, hurt or caressed, abused or set up for humiliation, and after a while, they came to love him for it—or at least obey him. Obedience was close enough for him; he'd take that over love any day.
So it was with no worry at all that he took three steps to stand before her steadily breathing, still form, and put a hand to her jaw. "Open," he said in his rich voice, and her lips parted in instant compliance to receive the wooden bit he'd been trimming. As he pressed it deeper into her mouth, he noted that it scraped the gums, and probably pressed the palate about there. Good, good. It would serve as another test of her training in itself, then, and the soreness that lingered after Telica's visit would simply be another reminder of his attentions, and who she served now.
Who she served? That was another delicious irony. Hadanelith was, as far as anyone else knew, serving her, but behind these doors, she was his as surely as any other of his whittled treasures. His treasures were six now; Dianelle, Suriya, Gaerazena, Bethtia, and Yonisse, and Telica here, each one a good but still slightly flawed carving.
There was always something wrong with them by the time he'd made them his artworks. Why was that? Why was the wood always unseasoned, or knotty, or split down the middle, when he'd finally carved away enough of the bark to make something beautiful? It was as if the wood that looked so promising on the outside failed to live up to the promise; that by the time he'd gotten enough of the useless wood shaved away to refine the details, the flaws in the material showed themselves.
Telica here, for instance, was too quiet. It was nearly impossible to get as much as a whimper out of her. He was no more lusty than any other man, he felt, and there were times, just as when one craved a certain dish or fruit, when he simply had to hear a muffled cry of anguish or a sob. Telica was mute as a stick unless he lacerated her with a blade or pierced her flesh with a needle. She was just as flawed in her silence as Gaerazena was in her garrulous, hysterical chattering and Yonisse was in her shuddering anxieties.
It couldn't be his skill; it had to be the material itself. If only he could get his hands on a woman of real substance, breeding, true quality. A woman like Winterhart....
That one he had yet to touch, although he had watched her hungrily for ten years. Now there was a creature fit for an artist! Not wood at all, she was the finest marble, a real challenge to carve and mold. But he could do it. He was more than a match for her, just as he was more than a match for any of them. What sculptor was ever afraid of his stone? What genius was ever afraid of his toys? The challenge would be to unmake and then remake her, but to do it so cleverly that she asked for every change he made to her.
What a dream....
But a dream was all it ever would be. She would never come to him, not while she was mated to the oh-so-perfect Amberdrake. And not when the whole city knew how disgustingly contented she was with her mate. It was all too honey-sweet for words, just as sickeningly, cloyingly sweet as that sugar-white gryphon, Skandranon, and his mate.
It was just a good thing for him that not everyone in this little Utopia was as contented with life as those four were.
He would certainly enjoy giving all of them a bitter taste of reality when the time was right. Especially Winterhart. Get under that cool surface and see what seethed beneath it. Find out what she feared.
Not the ordinary fears of his six creations, he was certain of that. No, Winterhart must surely fear something fascinating, something he would have to work hard to discover. What could he cut free from inside her? Now there was an interesting image; a hollow woman, emptied out slice by slice, with only a walking shell left for everyone else to see. How could it be done? And how thin could he carve those walls before the sculpture collapsed in on itself? Well. If the wood was good enough, he could scoop out quite enough to satisfy his needs.
These thoughts were on his mind as he lowered his knife down between Telica's thighs. That, and his craving for her to make some noise for him.
The blade touched the birch-white skin of one thigh.
At that moment, a shadow moved across Telica's still skin. The lighting in the room shifted as someone—no, several someones—came into the room uninvited. Now this was an outrage! Hadanelith whirled, knife in hand, to confront these presumptuous invaders. Before he could utter more than a snarl, a boot to his face made things quite different than a minute before, when he was the one in control.
Amberdrake's trepidation had hardened into a dull, tight pain in his gut. It certainly wasn't because he hadn't seen horror in his life, or felt himself grow ill from feeling others' suffering. It wasn't precisely because he feared a violent confrontation, or the cleaning up that was always needed after such a thing happened. The sensation he had, as the group arrived at Hadanelith's home—or perhaps it should be called a lair—was dread for its own sake. Amberdrake had the feeling that nothing good was going to come of this arrest. Morally it was the right thing to do, by Law it was the right thing to do, yet still there was that gnawing in his gut that told him they were doing more harm than good.
Aubri, the Eternally Battered, apparently felt it also, although it might have just been a bad breakfast that caused his disgruntled expression. He was a gryphon who never had any good luck, if you believed what he said.
"It's too quiet in there, Drake," he wheezed, as they held themselves poised just outside Hadanelith's door. "We know he's got someone in there, so why isn't there any sound?"
"I don't know," Amberdrake replied, in an anxious whisper. "I don't like it, either. Judeth?"
"I've got a bad feeling about this," she said shortly. "Let's get in there—now."
With a wave of her hand, she led her group of ex-fighters through the door in a rush. Amberdrake trailed behind, warrant still held in his clenched hand, dreading what they would find.
So he didn't actually see Judeth kick Hadanelith in the jaw and send him sprawling to the floor, but once he saw what had prompted that action, he also saw no need to protest what might be considered an act of brutality.
The young woman was bound only by thread, in one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable positions Amberdrake had ever seen. Her skin was sheened with sweat, and her muscles trembled with the effort of holding herself in place. There were faint scars in many places on her pale skin. With Hadanelith's carving knife lying on the floor where Judeth had just kicked it, there wasn't much doubt in Amberdrake's mind where those scars had come from.
But most horrible of all—she acted as if she were completely unaware of their presence.
No. She's not acting. She is unaware of our presence. She will not acknowledge that we are here because he has not told her to.
That was what held him frozen, and what made Judeth's eyes blaze with black rage; that one presumably human person had done this to another.
The scars are only the least of what he has done to her. This will take months to undo. This is a case for the Healers; my people can't possibly make this right.
With trem
bling hands, Amberdrake unrolled the arrest warrant and read it out loud. Hadanelith did not move from the place where he lay sprawled across his own floor, not even to finger the growing bruise on his jaw.
He only glared up at Amberdrake in impotent fury as the kestra'chern read out the charges and the sentence.
"You've heard the charges. We've seen the evidence before our eyes. You've been caught, Hadanelith," Judeth said fiercely, biting off each word as if she bitterly regretted having to say anything to him at all. "Have you got anything to say in your defense?"
In answer, Hadanelith spat at her. Since he was lying on the ground and she was standing over him, it didn't get very far. The glob of spittle hit the top of her boot and ran down the side. One of the human Silvers snarled and pulled back a fist; Judeth caught his arm.
"No point in soiling your hands, Tylar," she said coldly. She looked around, picked up a piece of expensive silk that Hadanelith was using for a couch drape, and deliberately wiped her boot with it, dropping it at her feet in a crumpled heap. Only then did she turn to look at her prisoner.
"There are a lot of things I would like to do to you, scum," she said, her voice flat and devoid of all emotion. "However, we've got one Law to deal with people like you. Hadanelith, by reason of being caught in the acts described, you will be taken as you are to the plateau above White Gryphon in chains. You will be taken to the edge of the lands we have claimed and cultivated. There you will be freed of your chains, and you will be given from now until darkness falls to take yourself outside our border marker. If, by tomorrow at dawn, you are still inside them, whoever finds you is permitted to take any steps he deems necessary to get rid of you."
Hadanelith's rage showed clearly in his eyes, but his voice was as cold as Judeth's. "As I am? What, no weapons, no food, no—"
"You are a mad dog, scum. We don't supply a mad dog with food and weapons." Her lips thinned, and her eyes glinted as she looked down at him. "You think that you're so clever—I suggest you start using that cleverness to figure out how to survive in the forest with only what you're wearing." She jerked her head at the rest of the Silvers. "Chain him up, and get him out of here before he makes me sicker than I already am."
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