Tangled Webs bj-6

by Anne Bishop

  “I don’t have to admit anything,” Marian replied. But she smiled when she said it. Just outside the dining room, where people would be waiting for their turn to enter, was a dusty table with a vase of dead flowers. Swipe a finger in the dust—or even better, have one of the landen boys write his name in the dust—and the next thing that appeared was the words “hello, prey.”

  She’d thought of that one all by herself.

  It was the mix of the absurd, the creepy, and the real that was making the spooky house more than the dumb ideas the landen boys had originally told Jaenelle. Now there were ghostly guides directing people through the house and telling them bits of stories so they would know what to look for in each room. There were phantom shapes that would appear in one of the mirrors, but the spell didn’t engage until someone looked in the mirror. As you walked down one part of the upstairs hallway, you heard a heart-breakingly beautiful voice singing—Jaenelle’s voice, in fact—but if you backtracked to hear it again, it was gone.

  And then there were the other guides.

  “Nobody is going to be scared of a Sceltie,” Marian said as the two illusion-spell dogs—one black with tan markings on his face, the other brown and white—trotted into the dining room and stared at the humans, their expressions just a little too gleeful.

  “That’s because these people don’t live with a Sceltie,” Jaenelle replied.

  Marian studied the illusions, whose tails began to wag now that she focused her attention on them. “How complex a spell is this?”

  “They’ll be able to interact with the visitors in the most usual ways.”

  A wicked cheerfulness shivered through Marian. “In other words, they’re going to herd the landen children going through the house.”

  “They can touch you; you can’t touch them,” Jaenelle said, tipping her head toward the dogs. “Your hand will pass right through, but you’ll certainly feel it if one of them nips you.”

  She was starting to like this house better and better. Those landen boys wanted to see how the Blood lived? They thought it was all cobwebs in the corners and rats in the walls? Ha! Let them try to deal with the kindred!

  “How did we end up with Sceltie ghosts?” Marian asked.

  A blush stained Jaenelle’s cheeks. “When I went to Scelt to ask Fiona to polish up the little story bits we wrote, Ladvarian and Shadow heard us talking. And since Kaelas got to be the snarl in the cellar and the ghost cat that’s seen from one of the upstairs windows…”

  “They nipped at you until you gave in, didn’t they?”

  “Badgered. There were no teeth involved. Mine or theirs.”

  Oh, the sour note in Jaenelle’s voice.

  Marian turned away to hide a grin. The powerful men in Jaenelle’s life didn’t often win an argument with her. On the other hand, she seldom won an argument with Ladvarian. Did it annoy Lucivar, Daemon, and Saetan to see a dog that didn’t come up to their knees cornering Jaenelle into agreeing to things when they couldn’t get her to budge, or were they grateful that someone could successfully herd their darling Queen when herding was required?

  “All right,” Jaenelle said briskly. “We have one more room that needs significant work.” She left the dining room and led the way to the room that must have been a parlor. “This will be the scariest room in the house.”

  Marian looked at the furniture and wallpaper and thought the room qualified without their doing anything to it. “What’s going to be in here?”

  Oh, the look in Jaenelle’s eyes as she said softly, “A promise.”

  Entering one of the small parlors that were in Witch’s private section of the Keep, Daemon used Craft to move another cushioned footstool next to the one that held Saetan’s socked feet. Then he sat down and studied his father as Saetan closed the book he was reading and took off the half-moon glasses.

  “Nice sweater,” Daemon said dryly, eyeing the long black sweater Saetan was wearing over a white silk shirt.

  “Nice shirt,” Saetan replied just as dryly, confirming Daemon’s suspicion that Saetan owned the sweater for the same reason he now owned this shirt. “The gold looks good on you.”

  “I have other clothes besides white shirts and black trousers,” Daemon grumbled.

  “If you don’t, you will.” Saetan smiled. “Have any of your silk shirts found their way into your Lady’s closet?”

  “No.” Daemon felt amusement bubble up. “My shoulders are broader than yours, so my shirts don’t fit as well as yours did. I gathered this was a disappointment. In terms of the shirts, not the shoulders.”

  “Lucky you.”

  He grinned at the sour note he heard in Saetan’s voice. Then his amusement faded as he called in a packet of letters tied with a rose-colored ribbon. “Sylvia wrote these,” he said softly. “There are a couple from the boys as well. I told her I would offer them, but you don’t have to take them.” Especially now when he could see the pain gathering in his father’s gold eyes. “I can keep them, or destroy them, or read them if you feel someone needs to know the contents. I will do with them whatever you want me to do.”

  “I can’t take them,” Saetan said, his voice strained. “It’s selfish, I know that, but…”

  Daemon vanished the packet and rested a hand on Saetan’s ankle. “You’re entitled to make that choice.”

  “There are reasons why the demon-dead have their own Realm. There are reasons for the dead to step back from the living. And those same reasons apply to Guardians.”

  Step back from whomever you must, Daemon thought. Except me. Except Lucivar.

  “You and Lucivar…” Saetan smiled that dry smile. “When I first told the two of you I was retiring from the living Realms, I heard the unspoken warning about what you’d do if I tried to shut myself too far away from all of you. And I wouldn’t have tried to shut you out. Not my children. Not you or Lucivar or Jaenelle. Not from the coven or the boyos, since they, too, are my children in a way.”

  “They’ve taken the lessons and the love and gone on with their lives. They aren’t placing any demands on you. Just small expectations, when there are any at all.”

  Saetan hesitated. “At this point, my darling, you and the others are fine entertainment most of the time. Not just for me. For Geoffrey and Draca as well. Even Lorn. Once a week, I go down to visit and read him the letters from the coven. The Darkness only knows what the legendary Prince of the Dragons thinks of the content.” Another smile, there and gone. “But it’s not the same with Sylvia.”

  “No, it’s not the same.” It could never be the same with a lover who truly touched a man’s heart. He gave his father’s ankle a friendly squeeze, then sat back on the footstool. “There are going to be some changes in her household. That may not be easier for her initially, but it will be different.”

  “Oh?”

  “I walked down to the village with five Sceltie puppies. I came back to the Hall with four.”

  “And the fifth?”

  “By now, I’m sure Sylvia has convinced the little bitch to let go of Mikal’s trousers. And Mrs. Beale promised to send her recipe for puppy biscuits to Sylvia’s cook.”

  “Mrs. Beale agreed to share a recipe,” Saetan said slowly.

  “Mrs. Beale agreed that I could pay for…I’m not sure what it is except that it’s something she wanted for the kitchen but couldn’t justify as a normal household expense.”

  “And you agreed to fund this in exchange for a recipe?”

  Daemon stared at his father for a long moment before he muttered, “She sharpened the meat cleaver before coming to talk to me.”

  One beat of silence. Two. Then Saetan burst out laughing.

  Almost time. Everything was almost ready. Big surprises soon. Just a few details left to handle.

  Almost ready.

  Soon.

  And then they would see how many of his surprises the SaDiablo family could survive.

  PART TWO

  EIGHT

  Lucivar braced his elb
ows on the kitchen table, clamped his hands on either side of his head—and squeezed.

  What was wrong with Rihlanders that they had to put everything down on paper? And why send this crap to him ? If Jhinkas were attacking a village in Ebon Rih—or any part of Askavi for that matter—he wanted to know about it because he would be the one stepping onto the killing field to take care of it. But why in the name of Hell did he need five pages of scribbles from some Queen’s Steward to tell him nothing was wrong ? And if he had to get stuck in this bog of words, why couldn’t the fool who wrote it have the courtesy of having penmanship that a person could read?

  Thank the Darkness Daemon took care of all the family business. For reasons he had never understood, Daemon liked paperwork.

  He didn’t mind the twice-a-month meeting to review the properties and wealth held by the SaDiablo family. They were necessary, and the Dhemlan estate that was part of his inheritance and the people who worked on that land were his responsibility. But Daemon didn’t make him read all those damn bits of paper just to tell him nothing was wrong.

  Normally he thought of the paperwork that came with being the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih as the equivalent of having a smashed toe—you just gritted your teeth and limped your way through it. But today it was raining, Marian was gone, and Daemonar and a wolf pup were entertaining themselves by making a lot of noise in the next room. If this had been summer, he would have stripped off the boy’s clothes and chucked those two outside, figuring a little water wouldn’t hurt any of them—as long as he got boy and pup cleaned up and dried off before their mothers returned. But it was a chilly autumn day and a cold rain, so he was stuck with paperwork, noise, and—bang bang bang.

  “I open it!” Daemonar shouted, scrambling to his feet and running for the door. “I open it!”

  Sure you will, boyo, Lucivar thought as he pushed away from the kitchen table. Just as soon as you’re tall enough to reach the latch—and the extra locks.

  He simplified his life by containing boy and pup inside a protective shield that kept them from racing out the door as soon as he opened it.

  The Dhemlan youth standing at the door was a Summer-sky-Jeweled Warlord wearing a messenger’s uniform.

  “I have a special delivery for Prince Lucivar Yaslana,” the Warlord said, holding out a cream-colored envelope.

  As he reached for the envelope, he used Craft to create a skintight, Red-strength shield around his hand and forearm. Creating a shield before taking something from a stranger was second nature to him. The fact that the Warlord’s eyes widened told him it wasn’t second nature to the boy.

  “You don’t shield before taking something from someone you don’t know?”

  “They’re messages!”

  “And packages?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  Lucivar stared at him.

  “It would drain my Jewels faster if I shielded every time I handled a message,” the Warlord protested. “Besides, everything is checked at the message stations before we’re given our bundles to deliver.”

  Lucivar just stared at him.

  Beads of sweat popped out on the Warlord’s forehead.

  “First of all,” Lucivar said, “it requires very little power to maintain a shield after you’ve created it, unless the power is being drained because something is striking it in an effort to get to you. Second, since the danger is minimal and you look old enough to have made the Offering to the Darkness, there is no reason why you can’t use your Birthright Jewel to shield and tap into the reservoir of power in your Summer-sky Jewel to ride the Summer-sky Wind and deliver your messages at your best speed. Third, even if you believe the danger is minimal, walking into an unknown without shielding is a stupid kind of arrogance—and not an arrogance I’ll tolerate where I rule.” He continued to stare at the Warlord and waited.

  “So all messengers coming into Ebon Rih should shield before handling the messages?” the Warlord finally asked.

  “That’s right. And if it’s shrugged off, I’m going to kick someone’s ass—and I’m not going to be particular about whose ass gets kicked. Make sure you deliver that message to whoever is in charge of the message station.”

  “Yes, Prince.”

  The Warlord managed a stiff-legged control all the way across the courtyard, then raced headlong down the stairs to the landing area, where he could catch the Summer-sky Wind and get out of Ebon Rih.

  Lucivar closed and locked the door, released Daemonar and the wolf pup from the protective shield, and walked back into the kitchen muttering, “No shields? What are they teaching these boys?” Since the messenger had come from Dhemlan, he’d talk to Daemon about this. No, he’d write to Daemon, who would understand the effort required. And that would guarantee the message would get the sharp edge of his brother’s attention.

  Just look at that, Lucivar thought as he opened the envelope. Now that I’m settled down and respectable, more or less, I can be twice the prick I used to be and not even have to leave my own home.

  A glance at Daemonar and the pup, who were sitting close to each other and were quiet. The quiet wouldn’t last more than another few moments, so he pulled the heavy paper out of the envelope and tossed the envelope on top of the other papers spread out on the kitchen table. Then he gave his attention to the words.

  “‘Your presence is requested at a private viewing of The Spooky House,’” he read aloud. An invitation from Jaenelle and Marian. More than an invitation. “Your presence is requested” was a phrase used in Protocol, and the gentleness of the wording didn’t change the fact that it amounted to a command. Especially when it came from his Queen and his wife. But…

  Lucivar twisted around to look at the clock on the other end of the kitchen counter.

  “Hell’s fire, Marian,” he muttered. “You didn’t leave me much time to find someone to watch the little beast and reach a village in the middle of Dhemlan.”

  He read the invitation again, and the insult under the words pricked his temper. He was a Warlord Prince, and he was the ruler of Ebon Rih. And this…invitation…despite the formal, and correct, wording, left a taste of slave in the air.

  Sending this shit piece of paper to him was selfish, especially since Marian could have told him about this viewing yesterday so he wouldn’t have to jump on command and scramble to find someone to watch the boy. If it had been anyone but Marian and Jaenelle, he would have told her to take a piss in the wind. And he still might, even though one woman was his wife and the other his sister.

  And that, damn it, was the bone that stuck in his throat. Jaenelle and Marian were both originally from Terreille, but they had never acted like the bitches who lived in that Realm. Until now.

  He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slow and easy. A man didn’t make decisions because of an insult hidden within words. A man made decisions based on honor—and Protocol. So he would heed the command, even though it rankled. He wouldn’t disappoint his wife, and he wouldn’t disobey his Queen. But…

  He hadn’t seen the spooky house—the Ladies had insisted that he and Daemon not see the place until it was completed—so he didn’t know the exact location of the damn village.

  First things first. He needed to find someone to—

  The wolf pup yipped. Daemonar yelped.

  Opening his eyes, Lucivar flipped the invitation toward the counter as he moved to separate boy and pup, but before he’d completed that first step, he knew this wasn’t one of the usual boy-and-pup tussles. Something more had happened during those moments of inattention, because Daemonar’s fist was raised in real anger and the pup’s teeth were bared with intent to harm.

  And he, seeing a disaster in the making, made a sound that thundered through the eyrie—the primal, undiluted roar of a furious adult male.

  The three of them froze.

  As Lucivar stared at the boy and pup, who were staring back at him, he thought, Mother Night. I sound like my father.

  The thought, like the stone th
at starts an avalanche, broke open something inside him. He felt the cascade, felt the pressure of the storm on his skin, in his bones. No telling what was coming or how long he could hold it back. But the children had to come first.

  So he moved, scooping up Daemonar in one arm and the pup in the other. He vanished the papers on the kitchen table and plunked boy and pup down—and faced the next problem as he kept pushing back that storm, that sound.

  There was one of him and two of them—and a truth that would sink into the marrow of their bones and remain long after the actual memory was gone. No matter which one he tended first, the other “child” would always know he wasn’t as important, didn’t matter as much. And things would never be the same between boy and wolves.

  So one hand examined the pup and found a sore spot that could have been caused by a kick, while the other hand pushed down the boy’s sock. The pup had caught Daemonar enough to scrape the skin on the inside of the boy’s ankle. Lucivar rubbed his thumb over the scrape, wiping away the blood before Daemonar noticed it.

  “You’re all right,” he said, trying for soothing but not able to keep the grim temper out of his voice. “Nothing punctured, nothing broken.” And neither more damaged than the other, thank the Darkness.

  Keeping a firm grip on both of them, he stopped trying for soothing. “I don’t care what you did. I don’t care who started it. If this happens again, you won’t be allowed to play together.”

  Whimpers from the pup. A poked-out, quivering lower lip from Daemonar.

  Hearing the click of nails on the stone floor, Lucivar turned his head and looked at Tassle, who was standing in the archway. Using a light psychic touch, he showed the wolf the memory of what had just happened.

  Tassle bared his teeth and snarled at both children.

  “Here,” Lucivar said, setting the pup on the floor. “Why don’t you take care of yours this afternoon, and I’ll deal with mine.”

  At least, he hoped he’d be able to take care of his son. He hoped the emotional storm produced by that sound wouldn’t cripple him.