"Of course, Gavin," I said as he poured more instructions into my ear on the way to the Council Chamber—the Council meeting would decide which streets needed repairs and whether to buy new hovercars for Sheriff Trevor's department.
Did I expect Trevor to attend the meeting? I should have, but I hadn't. I wanted to go to him. Sit with him. Talk with him. Gavin growled low beside me, so I settled for giving him a hopeless glance before listening to boring speeches on what road repairs were needed and how many new vehicles could be purchased.
The debate lasted most of the day. I could have counted (and replaced) every brick in the streets discussed by that time. I could tell Trevor was disappointed, too—he'd asked for ten new vehicles. Only three were approved.
My love, you look tired, filtered into my mind. It wasn't Trevor's voice. This voice was different, and it didn't come again.
* * *
"That is the Ambassador to Tyriss, with his six concubines," Erland whispered close to my ear. I watched as Rylend spoke with the Ambassador fifteen feet away from where Erland and I stood.
Rylend had chosen a round, richly decorated antechamber to greet the Ambassador before inviting him to the smaller royal dining hall for a midday meal. "What can you tell me?" Erland asked softly.
He's horrible. Beats his concubines. Mistreats his servants. Sucks up to the Royal Prince of Tyriss, who has enjoyed Ambassador Riis's lip prints on his ass until recently. I feel that's about to change. Oh, and he gives bad advice and blames it on somebody else every time. I sent my communication by mindspeech—I didn't want Ambassador Riis to hear anything I said.
You think he might use a Karathian warlock as a scapegoat?
I think he'd use his mother and his firstborn child as scapegoats if it would keep him out of trouble.
Then Rylend will offer his regrets at the end of the meal, Erland sighed softly.
I wouldn't put my worst enemy in a position to serve Ambassador Riis, I agreed. Although it might be fun to watch Gavin remove Riis's head.
Will you sit beside me at dinner, then? Erland smiled as he gazed elsewhere.
If you want. I can hear everything Riis says and tell you when he's lying, if you'd like.
That sounds like fun.
* * *
"I could tell he was lying," Ry agreed as he accepted a glass of wine from a servant after the meal. Ambassador Riis had been sent away quite disappointed. "I just didn't suspect the other things."
Erland had escorted me to Rylend's private study afterward, and I accepted a glass of wine, too. I'd had very little to drink at the table, although the food they'd served me was very good.
"He won't last much longer. I think the royal house may wake soon and discover that Riis has his hand in the till." I sipped a very good white wine and nodded my thanks to Ry.
"Do you suppose that's why he wanted a warlock—to get away at a moment's notice?" Erland asked, settling on the edge of his son's desk and accepting a glass of wine as well.
"Yes. I think the wheels are turning in his little, hamster-powered brain," I agreed. "And it would give a black eye to Karathia, to know that the Crown supplied a warlock to Riis with full blessings."
"He offered three times what the job was worth," Ry agreed.
"Still not worth it," I said. "The damage would follow you for a very long time. I'm just worried about the women he has. Most of them put up with his bullshit because he has a lot of money. I can't imagine what he might do to them if they try to leave after he's pushed out by the Royal Prince."
"I haven't heard that word, except from Lissa," Erland said.
"Bullshit?" I lifted an eyebrow in Erland's direction.
"That's the one." He swallowed more wine.
"I'm from Texas," I said. "Lissa is from Oklahoma. People from both states say bullshit a lot. Especially if something really is a pile of crap." Ry laughed.
* * *
"What did you do for Rylend?" Gavin growled the moment Erland left. He'd dropped me off in my office, where Gavin was waiting impatiently.
"I told him the truth. Ambassador Riis was attempting to take advantage of Ry and his warlocks, because he'll need a quick getaway very soon. And I said bullshit. Three times."
"You were disrespectful?"
"No. Erland and I discussed the fact that Lissa is from Oklahoma, where they say bullshit often. Ask him about it, if you like." I was tired and wanted to go to bed. I was hoping too, that Kalenegar had given up his sadistic night travels. Sleep was a precious commodity, and I found myself craving it like a drug.
"How do you know Lissa is from Oklahoma?"
"The same way I know you're Roman. I'm from Texas. It's next door to Oklahoma. They say bullshit there, too. May I go to bed, now?"
Gavin cursed under his breath but he waved me out of his office. I was a blur getting away from him, afraid that he might change his mind.
* * *
"Get up." That voice I knew and it belonged to a tall, red-haired, sadistic Larentii, who seemed overly fond of waking me from a sound sleep.
"Fuck off," I snapped and misted the hell away from him.
* * *
"I feel the soil and the tree you're leaning against," Corent settled beside me with a sigh. "That's how I knew you'd come." I'd wakened him, just as Kal had wakened me. That wasn't what I'd meant to happen.
"I'm sorry I woke you," I apologized, blinking in the light on that half of the planet. It never really went dark there, and I wondered how Corent managed to sleep at all.
"I do not mind," Corent smiled and leaned against the same tree. I'd chosen an oak tree outside his grove, hoping I wouldn't disturb anybody.
"I took your advice," I said. "I managed to turn to mist. Apparently, I can fold space, too. I wonder what else I can do, now," I sighed.
"Have you ever seen the cities on your own?"
"I haven't seen much of anything here, unless I was accompanied by a grumpy vampire."
"I don't go often, but I have visited. Visitors tend to stare at my hair."
"That's too bad. Do you ever wear hats?"
"Seldom. They interfere with my weather senses."
"What do you like best about visiting the cities?"
"The ice-cream shops. There are two—one in Casino City and another in Sun City."
"I love ice cream." I leaned back against the tree trunk and closed my eyes with a sigh. I'd gotten precious little ice cream in my life.
"Change your face and come with me." Why hadn't I thought of that before? I did it easily, and Corent smiled when I was finished—I wore my own face. Corent rose, took my hand and lifted me. I blinked in surprise as he folded me to Casino City, then shrugged my shoulders and made a mental note for myself as we walked into Niff's Ice Cream Shop.
Chapter 9
Kay's Journal
I'd expected someone before this. Perhaps it was an oversight or an attempt to give me a false sense of security before death came in the form of a paid assassin. Did they think I wouldn't recognize this one? I did. Rezil Foculis stood amid displays of fruit and vegetables in the all-night market, as out of place as a vampire in morning sunlight. Dressed expensively in dark clothing, Rezil might have been a vampire or any one of the creatures that only haunted nights as he shifted his balance, pretending to examine the small, tastefully stacked pile of gishi fruit.
Gishi fruit, fresh and in season, had brought me out of my small condo for the evening—the expensive, pear-shaped dark-green fruit that sold for thirty-six Alliance credits each and was as close to a taste of the afterlife as I was ever likely to get. One fruit was all my budget would allow per moon-turn; my deceased husband's gambling debts saw to that. Cull Sollo had been born with a gambling problem, I think.
His death and my disobedience afterward precipitated this visit by an assassin, who as yet hadn't caught sight of me. If he had, I'd be bleeding out my last on the tiled floor of a small, twenty-eight-hour, eight-day shop in Campiaa City, the seat of the Campiaan Alliance.
> Rezil, who hadn't caught sight of me, also didn't see as I slipped out the door with a harried mother and her crying child. Rezil had no patience for children, crying or otherwise, so we were ignored.
Separating myself from the mother and child, I slipped into deeper shadows surrounding the small business. Farther down the street, the lights of Campiaa City and all its gleaming casinos lined a strip of sand that ran along the curving half-moon of Campiaa Bay. This had been heaven for Cull, so he'd bought a small condo within walking distance of his favorite gambling establishments. Campiaa City was where he'd spent the last nine years of his life, gambling heavily and racking up debt eight of those years.
His age, disease, drinking and eating habits had finally caught up with him, after he'd refused to seek medical treatment many times. Heart failure was the final diagnosis when the medics hauled his body away from our fourth-floor apartment. That was six moon-turns past. When I failed to report my husband's death to Cull's cousin, and then refused to ask him to send someone to collect me, Rezil had appeared.
Will you think it strange that I argued with myself every step of the distance between the grocery and my condo? I did. No one else I'd ever met had two perfectly preserved sets of memories inside their heads. I did. One set was more horrible than the other, with neither being anything close to pleasant. The younger, darker mindset fought to convince the older, more reasonable mindset to end it all.
I had the means—a bottle of medication that Cull had obtained through less than legitimate channels. A handful of small tablets was all it would take and everything would be over for me. This time, a remaining spark of hope and the older, more reasonable voice won.
* * *
Later, I used my comp-vid to buy two tickets for passage away from Campiaa. Yes, it was perfectly ironic and on a better day, I might have laughed over the whole thing. Instead, I focused on saving my life and took no time to dwell on anything as frivolous as laughter. A bag was packed and waiting while I carefully attached the fabricated gel cheeks and chin, making my face rounded and chubby.
Already dressed in padded clothing several sizes too large for my small frame, I slipped a mousy-blonde wig over my head and surveyed the results. My appearance matched the ID chip embedded in the bracelet I now wore on my right wrist—my actual identifying chip was beneath the skin on my left.
What might save me was the fact that the Campiaan Alliance was still in its infancy and relatively new to Alliance identification. Barely forty-three sun-turns old, authorities were grateful if its citizens had any sort of ID. All I had to do was rake my braceleted right wrist over the scanner, match the photograph that popped up and through the security gate I'd go. It was the only way I might live past the following day.
The line wasn't long at the transport terminal; even so I wanted to fidget. I'd planned for this day, hoping it would never come. Kalia Sollo's ticket was for Tulgalan, a world inside the Reth Alliance. Kay Zahn, my alter ego, was bound for Avendor.
There wasn't much to recommend Avendor, except volcanic soil on the Southern continent, where the conditions were right to grow gishi fruit. No other planet could produce gishi fruit in the Campiaan Alliance, and only Kifirin in the Reth Alliance had been able to grow fruit just as good. Gishi fruit was rare, delicious and every fruit was sought after and purchased. For less than twenty years, gishi fruit ice cream had been sold on the market, and it was so expensive I couldn't afford it.
My plan was to seek a job within the groves on Avendor—I'd heard that the work was hard but rewarding. I wanted to hide among those dark-leaved trees and hope for an opportunity to eat the fruit at a discounted price now and then. Cull had his addictions; I had mine. Mine was healthy, at least. Many scientific studies had been performed regarding the health benefits of gishi fruit, and to someone like me, that was a siren's call. Better than any sort of berry available, wealthy women ate it and packed creams made from the fruit and peel onto their faces.
"Having a long day?" I asked the security agent as sympathetically as I could. I always knew how people were feeling—it was a talent the older part of me possessed. Inwardly, I was petrified that the agent would call the terminal authorities after I scanned my bracelet; I'd be sent to the holding cells for using counterfeit identification before the CSD came to arrest me.
The agent barely glanced at the photograph on his screen and waved me through instead. Rezil was no doubt watching the entrances to the terminal for Kalia Sollo, waiting for her to arrive for an appointment with assassination.
* * *
"Grandfather?" Ashe Evans lifted his gaze to Rabis, who stepped inside the spacious office he kept at SouthStar. Ashe called his home a villa, but it was a palace, with blue domes over cream walls on many levels, and all of it trimmed in gold.
Although he'd attempted to convince Rabis to live with him at the villa, Rabis preferred a more modest home beneath the open skies of SouthStar's gishi fruit groves. A city, built by Ashe and Renegar the Larentii, lay farther south, where many shapeshifters and werewolves lived. Most of them worked in the groves and earned more than enough to be comfortable.
Of all those close to Ashe, only three had permanent quarters in the villa—Trajan, Trace and Bill Jennings. Trace spent most of his time at NorthStar, with his mates Franklin, Shane and Tomas. His other two mates, Celestan and Galaxsan, visited whenever they could get away from Campiaa. Trace even worked at NorthStar upon occasion, to help out. Ashe didn't mind, he had enough employees and realized that Trace merely wanted to be closer to his loves.
"Grandchild, she is close. I feel it. I just can't find her," Rabis muttered in frustration. "The signs come and then disappear before I can grasp them."
"But," Ashe blinked in surprise at Rabis. "Grandfather, you've never said she was close, before."
"I know. The visions are strong, child, I just can't locate her."
"We'll find her." Ashe tapped his comp-vid—he'd been entering harvest expenses. He didn't have to do it manually, but the mundane activity often helped clear his mind for other things.
"You must take care; she will be damaged and need love and assistance." Rabis' eyes turned dark as the vision gripped him. "She mistrusts women. All women," Rabis' voice had deepened and he trembled. Ashe stood in alarm, dropping the comp-vid on his desk.
* * *
Breanne's Journal
"This is the best ice cream I've ever tasted." It really was the best ice cream anyone had ever tasted. Made from gishi fruit, it was cold heaven in a disposable dish, and Corent had used his credit chip to purchase two scoops for each of us at Niff's. He'd even smiled as we were charged one-hundred Alliance credits for our purchase.
"Gishi fruit only grows on two planets," Corent explained as I savored every bite of my treat at a small, corner table inside the shop. Lissa co-owned it with her two assistants, and it was a lucrative business. "Both Avendor and Kifirin have the right mix of rich, volcanic soil to grow it to this sweetness."
"This is the most wonderful thing ever," I sighed, scraping up the last of my ice cream. I wasn't going to waste a single drop of this—it was too good.
"I enjoy it," Corent's hair turned a lovely blue-green as he smiled at me. That's when the side door into the shop opened nearby and two people walked in. I don't know why I bothered to read them—I'd learned to block the visions. I read them anyway.
The first—a dark-haired man of average height with a square face, didn't spare a glance in my direction as he stalked past, and I'd quickly read him before covering a gasp. Here was another with an obsession, just like the others I'd seen.
The woman who followed him into Niff's was the one who captured my full attention, however. I stared for barely a blink before dropping my gaze and scraping the bottom of my ice-cream dish again. It wouldn't do to let her know she'd caught my attention. I knew her name, knew she'd changed her appearance and knew that she was responsible for placing obsession on who knew how many.
Corent, we need to go soon, I sent m
indspeech. As discreetly as possible.
Corent was a master of discretion, and could likely disappear into the city as easily as he might vanish in a grove of trees. He waited for several seconds, then nodded to me. We rose to exit Niff's through the same door Erithia Cordan had entered minutes earlier.
* * *
Kooper, I tapped the message into my comp-vid, Erithia Cordan is alive and walking around Casino City in disguise. I don't know who Rathik murdered, but it wasn't her, I added before hitting send on my comp-vid.
Sighing, I tossed the comp-vid onto the Queen's bed and flopped down beside it. How could I sleep, knowing she was out there and doing who knew what? She was plotting something, only I hadn't had time to get to the bottom of it—I'd dropped my gaze quickly, worried that she'd see and recognized me, somehow. I also had the idea that Erithia was eons old and that frightened me. If Gavin hadn't leveled his anger against me by keeping Kooper, Trevor and Stellan away, I'd be in Trevor's Casino City office right then, telling him and Kooper what I'd seen.
* * *
"What's that?" Tony lifted an eyebrow in Gavin's direction.
"I have a diverter application on Breanne's comp-vid. I don't want messages going to Kooper, Trevor or Stellan." Gavin tapped his comp-vid screen determinedly.
"What are you doing?"
"Deleting a message to Kooper, unread."
"Gavin, what if that was important?"
"Nothing from that woman is important."
* * *
Breanne's Journal
Cheedas could go fuck himself. Now that I could mist anywhere and everywhere, I could do all the laundry in the palace and he couldn't do a thing about it. Yes, I could fold space, too, but that still frightened me. Worried that I'd end up in another strange place while the local constabulary shot weapons in my direction, I'd avoided it. I'm sure that if Gavin knew anything about it, he'd be plotting to make my demise happen sooner than originally planned.
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