by Sharon Green
"I know you don't, Issini, and I appreciate the offer," Driff said with the same kind of smile. "I've appointed myself as executioner, though, and for one very important reason. If someone has to be killed, I think it would be better for all of us if the one doing the killing is reluctant. Otherwise we might get to the point of enjoying the job…"
Issini needed only a brief moment of thought before she nodded her agreement, a faint disturbance inside her clear to Edmin. He knew that Issini might be quick to decide that someone needed to die, but unless she were defending herself against attack she would later wonder if her decision had been right. Driff really was far wiser than the rest of them, Edmin thought…
"All right, no sense waiting any longer," Driff said, and then he looked at Feriun. The former guard commander sank slowly down to the floor as if he were falling asleep, and once he lay stretched out his breathing suddenly went ragged. Feriun gasped once, twice, and began to gasp a third time, but that was the end of it. All breath flowed out of the man in a single exhalation, making it perfectly clear that he was gone.
"And now I think we need to take a short break," Idresia said after a moment, her words brisk. "We had a perfectly good reason for not leaving Feriun for the Highs to judge, but it might be a good idea to put that reason into writing. Just in case they have any questions once Driff finds the way to bring them back."
Edmin joined the others in agreeing, which let them all rise and leave the room. Driff would need their support after seeing to his first execution, but Edmin paused outside the room to tell the guards to get rid of the body before he followed his Blendingmates. And it might be a good idea to find another room for Driff to use during the rest of the interviews…
Edmin had been hoping for something to distract him from the talk he'd had with his father, but this wasn't quite what he'd had in mind…
Chapter Twenty-One
Honrita walked into the shabby house to find that everyone had arrived before her, and that included Ayl. She was in a strangely clear-headed and oddly serene mood after all the thinking she'd done, so Ayl's scowl truly had no affect on her.
"You're late, Dama Grohl," Ayl said at once from the chair he sat in, the usual stiffness of his carriage suggesting he sat on a throne instead. "Should this happen again, your dereliction will be dealt with harshly."
This first room of the house was a sitting room of sorts, and someone had brought chairs and a table or two to partially fill it. The day before Honrita had used the kitchen to take control of Arbon Vand, but Ayl was apparently too good now to use a kitchen.
The rest of Honrita's proposed Blending also sat in chairs, Vand, Stelk Faron, and Seeli Tandor all holding themselves somewhat stiffly. Only Kadri Sumlow was fairly relaxed, probably because Honrita had taken full control of the Earth magic user as soon as she'd walked in.
"I hear no apology from you, Dama Grohl," Ayl said after a moment, his narrow, ascetic face showing nothing of the faint annoyance his tone - and mind - held. "Do you truly wish to test my patience?"
"Good morning, my friends," Honrita said to her future Blendingmates, giving each of them a smile. "I meant to be here earlier, but I was detained. Is everyone ready for our first try at Blending?"
Stelk Faron's nervousness increased, Seeli Tandor became faintly confused, and Arbon Vand looked sour. Since Kadri Sumlow was under Honrita's control she showed no reaction at all, but the same could not be said for Holdis Ayl.
"How dare you," Ayl growled as he got to his feet to glare at Honrita. "You will not ignore me as though I were of no importance whatsoever. First you will be punished, and then you will apologize properly. After that - "
"But you are of no importance whatsoever," Honrita interrupted to say, finally looking directly at Ayl. "It took me quite some time to understand that, but the truth finally made its appearance last night. You're exactly like my father, a useless incompetent with no talent other than frightening the helpless. You bully your way through life, forcing others to give you what you want, and then you decide to force your way into real power. But simple bullying isn't enough to gain real power, so you end up frustrated and insane - and a failure. That's all you'll ever be, Ayl, nothing but a poor, useless, failure."
"How dare you speak to me like that?" Ayl demanded, his eyes wide with frothing insanity. "I'm the one who found you and these others, and I'm the one who brought you together! You will obey me, else I shall - "
"Don't you know any other phrase than 'How dare you'?" Honrita interrupted again, pleased that her calm underscored Ayl's ranting. "I know it's inconvenient for you to remember things the way they actually happened, but I was the one who found you. You were going to use that pitiful specimen of a Spirit magic talent, but when I appeared you changed your mind. And you may have located the rest of these people, but I'm the one who brought them together. We'll be sure to throw you some silver for your effort once the city is ours."
Ayl sputtered and snarled, but nothing in the way of intelligible words came out of his mouth. Faron and Seeli now looked frightened, and Vand frowned at the goings on. Then Ayl raised his hands and started toward Honrita, his intention to strangle someone clear in the bend of his fingers and the raging insanity in his eyes. Honrita had expected something like that, and her reaction was to say, "Kadri."
Speaking the Earth magic user's name was all it took. Kadri was completely under Honrita's control, and protecting Honrita was the woman's sole concern. Ayl took no more than two steps toward his intended victim before he staggered and gasped and went to his hands and knees. If his face had been pale before, now it was downright white.
"Thank you, Kadri," Honrita said with a smile before returning her attention to Ayl. "The reason so many people fear you, Dom Ayl, is because you're prepared to do violence and they're not prepared to defend themselves. I, however, am more than prepared, and my Spirit magic may not be able to affect you but other talents can - especially when you're not braced against them. Would you like me to have Dom Vand join the demonstration with his Fire magic?"
Ayl raised his head to look at Honrita, and the hatred in his madness-filled eyes was so intense that it widened Honrita's smile.
"You know, cutting you down to size is almost as good as it would have been to do the same thing to my father," Honrita told him. "I had a … discussion of sorts once with a High in Spirit magic and a very good healer. They made me understand that I didn't have to be afraid of everyone I met, because the only thing that let others bully me was my own fear. My taking control of the fear also took away the power others had over me, they said, but I didn't understand that completely until last night. Now that I do understand it, I'm free to forget about what others think and concentrate only on what I want. Kadri, you may release him now."
Kadri had clearly gotten a grip on Ayl's heart, and when she released him he closed his eyes for a moment. Honrita waited that moment to let Ayl's color start to come back, and then she cleared her throat.
"At one time I would have let Kadri kill you," Honrita said when Ayl reluctantly raised his head again. "I would have been too afraid to let you live, and because of that you would have escaped the punishment of having your nose rubbed in reality. You've done a lot of terrible things to a lot of people, Dom Ayl, and it's time you paid for some of it. Living with the knowledge that you'll never be anything but 'that crazy old man' ought to even things up a bit for your victims. Now get out of here."
Ayl silently pushed himself to his feet, staggered to the door, and left. The madness in his eyes was even more intense now, and Honrita had no illusions.
"Kadri, keep track of him with me and let's see if he really does leave," Honrita said. Ayl liked to get even with people, Honrita knew, and it quickly became clear that the madman wasn't even letting a near heart attack change his habits. Ayl made his way to the end of the shabby neighborhood's block and then he stepped around the corner, but that was as far as he went.
"He's waiting until we Blend, and then he means to c
ome back and do something to us," Honrita murmured, as certain of that conclusion as she'd ever been of anything. "Kadri, I think Dom Ayl needs to be visited with an urgent call of nature. We'll be leaving here, and I don't want him able to follow."
Kadri's face still showed no emotions, but Honrita was able to tell that her suggestion had been acted on. Ayl was suddenly filled with desperation, and despite his clear desire to ignore the need he was quickly forced to give up his post. Honrita let her talent follow the man as he hurried away, and then she turned to the others.
"Come with me quickly, now," she said, taking control of Stelk Faron and Seeli Tandor as well. "I've found a much better place for us, and one that Dom Ayl isn't likely to locate very soon. Once we're safe, we'll be able to Blend."
Arbon Vand had no choice but to join the others in standing and following Honrita out. It was a small bit of a strain for Honrita to keep three people under full control and a fourth under partial control, but things worth having weren't meant to come easy. Honrita understood that now, and she was prepared to do whatever was necessary to make her dreams come true.
A hired carriage from the other side of the city waited two blocks away, and with Arbon Vand sitting next to the driver the carriage was able to carry them all. Once they were settled the driver got them on their way, responding to the buried orders Honrita had already given him. Once he left them at their destination, he would forget he'd ever seen them.
Their destination was the place Honrita had found to live, a fairly nice house that a fat and wealthy merchant of the city had given up when he bought one of the houses that the nobility used to own. The man who was supposed to be looking for a buyer for the house no longer remembered anything about the place, so Honrita knew they weren't likely to be disturbed here.
"See, I even had it furnished," Honrita said once she had her people inside, even though only Arbon Vand was truly able to understand her. "I think we'll be very comfortable here until the time comes for us to move to the palace."
"We haven't even managed to Blend yet," Vand pointed out sourly as she directed the others to the sitting room. "Unless and until that happens, talking about the palace makes you as crazy as that madman you tossed out."
"If I expected getting this group to Blend to be easy, I would be as crazy as Ayl," Honrita countered, clearly surprising Vand. "I'm going to have to talk to and work with our future Blendingmates first, and then we ought to be ready. And when we do Blend it will mostly be due to you, so please accept my thanks and appreciation."
"What are you talking about?" Vand demanded as he followed the rest of them into the sitting room. "I want no part of all this, so how can you say that I did anything to make it happen?"
Honrita simply smiled at him, not about to explain what she meant. She'd done a lot of thinking the day before, and after finally admitting to herself that she did want to bond with her male Blendingmates she'd had to admit something else. She did look like a skinny old maid, Seeli did look like a mindless and skinny old maid, and Kadri was a fat old maid. Not one of them was truly attractive, and on top of that Stelk Faron was so filled with doubts and uncertainty that he'd probably be unable to perform.
So Honrita had decided to change her future Blendingmates a bit on the inside, and then would change them outwardly in each other's eyes. Stelk would be free of his doubts, and Arbon would not find resisting really beautiful women as easy as he expected. The fact that only he and Stelk would see the women as beautiful was quite enough for Honrita's purposes. Real beauty was on the inside, after all…
Honrita smiled to herself as she headed for the kitchen to make fresh tea. The next few days should prove to be very interesting…
When Kail and the others reached the living quarters in the warehouse, he wasn't the only one who collapsed into a chair. They'd spent hours interviewing prisoners and still weren't finished.
"Remind me to find those renegades before the Astindans take them out of the city," Issini said in a voice that was filled with as much weariness as Kail felt. "As soon as I get enough sleep to let me stand straight, I want to beat the Nolls over the head with a heavy length of wood."
"Why go looking for the Nolls when we have Edmin right here?" Idresia countered in the same kind of voice. "He's the one who hired all those men to begin with, and I've been thinking about beating up on him for hours."
"If I thought I could stand up, I'd join you," Driff said to Idresia as he sent Edmin something of a glare. "He deserves everything we can think of to do to him."
"You seem to forget, brothers and sisters, that I'm already being punished," Edmin returned, looking even more tired than the rest of them. "My Spirit magic is letting me take on more interviews than you're handling, so I'm even more beaten down than you are. And don't worry about jumping on me. If I survive the rest of these interviews, I plan to kick myself up and down the length of the city."
"That sounds like a good idea," Kail granted with a nod. "Just make sure you let us know when you plan to do it so we can watch."
"But watching isn't what we need right this minute," Idresia said as the others chuckled. "What we need is a good meal, but I, for one, have no interest in cooking. If the rest of you feel the same, let's see if we can talk Driff into treating us to another meal in a dining parlor."
"Now there's another good idea," Kail said amid the eager agreement of everyone including Driff. "Just the thought of good food has given me the strength to get up and walk again, so let's decide where to go. How about - "
Before Kail could suggest the dining parlor that was quickly becoming his favorite, there was a knock at the door. Everyone looked as surprised as Kail felt, but Idresia still called out permission to enter.
"Idresia, I need to talk to you," a rather big man said from the doorway. He'd opened the door, but hadn't come in. "It's important."
"Well, don't just stand there, Jobry, come in and sit down," Idresia said with a smile. "We're getting ready to go out to eat, but we can spare a few minutes to listen."
"I'd like to think I'm not about to spoil your appetites, but I probably am," the big man said as he approached the large table and took an empty chair. Kail had thought at first that the man wasn't very bright, but that decision had been because of the man's looks. Once he began to speak, however, it quickly became clear that there was more to the man than his appearance.
"I don't like the sound of that," Idresia said, losing her previous amusement. "In case the rest of you don't know it, I haven't had my people stop looking and listening just because the Nolls are no longer a problem. I was hoping there would be nothing for them to look at and listen to, but the precaution seems to have turned out to be necessary. What have you found out, Jobry?"
"I was in the Tiger Tavern, pretending to drink," the big man replied at once. "A man came in alone and began to drink heavily, and before long he also began to talk to himself. A lot of what he said was slurred or mumbled, but he repeated himself enough that I probably didn't miss much if anything. He was drinking that heavily as a celebration of sorts, because 'the madman' had apparently found a different victim and now the drinker believed he was no longer on the spot. I say believed, but I think it was more a matter of hoping desperately."
"Do you have any idea what madman he meant?" Idresia asked, her frown much like the one Kail could feel on himself. "And, for that matter, what spot he'd been on?"
"I couldn't very well let the matter go, so I pretended to be just as drunk as the mumbler," Jobry answered with a sigh. "I also used my Earth magic to keep the man just drunk enough to talk freely without passing out. It took some time to get the details, but the man has Spirit magic and he'd been running errands for Holdis Ayl."
"Not Ayl again!" Driff exclaimed, dismay clear in his expression. "They should have found and arrested him weeks ago."
"Well, they didn't, because Ayl is still trying to make trouble," Jobry said with a headshake. "He told the drinker that he would be the basis for a very special Middle
Blending, one that Ayl meant to hand pick. The whole thing was supposed to be a secret, but Ayl still told the man that the special Blending would take over a High Blending one member at a time. Once all the members were under control, they would have the High Blending take over the government. Then the Middle Blending would run things, with the High Blending being nothing more than figureheads and guards for the real powers behind the throne."
"And Ayl would be the power behind the Middle Blending," Idresia said with disgust. "That plan is about a thousand times better than the one the Nolls came up with, and Ayl's six people would be worth that same thousand more than the three hundred guardsmen. We're just lucky that Ayl is so disturbed that he couldn't keep from boasting about the plan to the first person he picked out."
"Make that five people rather than six," Asri said with her own grimace. "I have the definite feeling that no Sight magic user would get involved with crazy people if they had the choice, and Sight magic gives you the choice."
"Not to mention the fact that Ayl probably can't spot someone with Sight magic," Issini put in. "He may be a renegade Guild member, but the Guild is only just learning to recognize Sight magic. Unless I'm mistaken, Ayl left the Guild some time before they began to learn that recognition."
"Jobry, did you get any idea of who Ayl got to replace the man you questioned?" Driff asked. "If we know that, it will save us a lot of work."
"The man knew nothing beyond the fact that his replacement was a woman," Jobry said with another headshake. "She also has Spirit magic, of course, and she wanted to work with Ayl instead of just being frightened into going along with a madman."
"That doesn't sound good at all," Edmin said, showing his own concern. "A Spirit magic user who isn't terribly enthusiastic about what he's doing can't possibly be as effective as one who wants to be involved. And the Spirit magic user is most likely the key to that proposed Blending, or else a different talent would have been chosen first."