by Anne Bishop
Jared’s control snapped. “We’re not slaves!” he roared. “We haven’t been slaves since we left Raej.”
Randolf stared at him.
Brock tried to suppress a pained laugh.
“We’re not slaves,” Jared said, struggling to leash his temper. “That’s why the Gray Lady’s so dangerous, even if that bitch Dorothea hasn’t realized it. For the past few years, she’s bought slaves at the auction and set them free. They go home, Randolf. Or they make a new home, a new life for themselves in Dena Nehele.”
Randolf groped for a chair and sat down, his eyes never leaving Jared’s face. “Why didn’t Lady Lia tell us? Why this game?” He shook his head. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong. We’re Ringed.”
“The Rings don’t work,” Blaed said. “Just enough power was put into them to make us think they were still connected to a controlling ring. But they aren’t. Besides, Lia has no idea how to use one.”
Randolf rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “Why didn’t she tell us?”
Jared felt two light psychic touches. Talon’s and Blaed’s signals that they were descending to their full strength— and ready to rise to the killing edge.
“Because,” Jared said quietly, “once she brought us all together, Lia sensed something was wrong, but she couldn’t find the source. So she continued the pretense of bringing slaves to Dena Nehele, and she made things as difficult as she could for whichever one of us serves the High Priestess of Hayll while trying to get the rest to safety.”
“One of us serves that bitch?” Randolf’s hands curled into fists.
Jared rested his hands on the table. “If Lia had told you in the beginning that you were free, that you could catch the Winds and go home, would you have gone?”
Randolf’s head moved slightly before he stopped himself from looking at the children.
“No,” Randolf said after a thoughtful silence. “No, I wouldn’t have. I’ve got too much pride as a Warlord and a guard to let a young Queen wander around without an escort.” A dangerous gleam filled his eyes. “Do you know who it is?”
“It’s Garth,” Brock said, wincing as he straightened to his full height and tucked his thumbs into his wide leather belt. “It’s Garth.”
Jared turned to face Brock at the same moment Randolf exploded out of his chair.
“I warned you!” Randolf shouted, throwing himself at Jared with enough force to send them both to the floor. “I told you that bastard was tainted! Damn you, why didn’t you listen to me? We might have gotten her home if you’d listened to me!”
Randolf threw a couple of punches before Blaed and Talon pulled him off Jared.
By the time Jared got to his feet, Brock had disappeared.
“Hold him,” Jared said as he rushed out of the tavern.
Spotting Brock walking purposefully down the road in the direction of the landing place, Jared ran to catch up to him. “Brock! Brock!”
When Brock turned around, Jared stopped abruptly, stunned by the bitterness in the other man’s face.
“Even now, when he’s barely half of what he used to be, you choose to believe him, to trust him,” Brock said. “Even now.”
Regret cut deep into Jared’s bones. “I trusted you.”
“Not enough to be useful,” Brock snapped. “You trusted the Warlord Prince whelp and the Black Widow enough to tell them we weren’t slaves, but not me. It might have been different if you’d trusted me.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Jared said coldly. “You’d already chosen whom you serve.”
“It might have,” Brock insisted. His face twisted with conflicting emotions. “Do you know how I came to be a slave? My Queen sold me to Hayll. The Territory Queen is getting old, and the bitch I served wants to rule more than a small Province. So she traded twenty of her best males for Hayll’s influence in choosing the next Territory Queen. She sold our freedom, our lives for ambition.”
“When a male serves, he puts his life into his Queen’s hands,” Jared said. “It’s hers to do with as she pleases. That’s the risk we all take, Brock.” Remembering Talon, he added, “His life, but not his honor. You had that much choice.”
“Who are you to talk about honor? You’re a pleasure slave, a nonman pretending to be a Warlord. A Queen killer. Where were you hiding your honor when you butchered her?”
“I was owned by her. I didn’t serve her.” But the verbal thrust hurt as much as a knife in the gut.
“You’re splitting hairs, Jared,” Brock said harshly. “But if that’s how you want to split it, then as far as I knew, I was owned by the Gray Lady. What’s the difference between you killing the bitch who owned you and me buying some kind of freedom for myself by helping the High Priestess get rid of a rival? All I had to do was lead the marauders to her if she escaped the trap at the Coach station.”
Brock’s lips curled into a sneer. “Hayll didn’t want her killed by a newly purchased slave because it would make all the other witches nervous about going to Raej to buy their pretty toys. I wasn’t going to have a Queen’s blood on my hands.”
Jared felt a weight settling in his chest. “Who was Garth before Dorothea did that to him?”
“The Province Queen’s Master of the Guard. A leader. Men trusted him, listened to him. Even our father always listened to him,” Brock added bitterly.
“Garth’s your brother?”
“My older brother. Always stronger. Always better at everything. After the High Priestess broke him back to his Birthright Purple Dusk and sealed him up inside himself, he wasn’t stronger or better anymore, was he? No one was going to listen to him anymore, were they? But they still didn’t listen to me, either.” Brock looked at Jared with eyes full of hatred. “The others would have listened to me if you hadn’t been there. I would have been the dominant male in the group if it hadn’t been for you. She would have trusted me.”
Jared studied Brock. How could the strong man he’d known on the journey become this whining boy? “The link with Garth,” Jared said slowly. “It not only hid your true nature, it also helped you act as Garth would have acted, say what he would have said.”
Brock nodded, his mouth curving in a sly, nasty smile. “I’m the one who thought of that after the Priestess put the compulsion spells around me that would make sure the Gray Lady bought me. Being brothers, it was easy to make a link that would meld our psychic scents so that the bitch-Queen couldn’t separate one from the other. I even made him place the first couple of buttons, since no one paid any attention to the mind-damaged male. But he started fighting me, defying me. After a while, all I could do was keep enough of the link so that I wouldn’t be discovered.”
Hold it back, Jared told himself. Leash it. Save this rage for the fight ahead. “You brought them to Ranon’s Wood. You brought these carrion-eaters from Hayll down on my people.”
“If she’d been captured at the ambush like she was supposed to, we wouldn’t have come to your precious village at all. If anyone brought them here, it was you.”
“Get out of here,” Jared said too quietly. “Get away from my people. You belong with those Hayllian bastards.”
Brock pouted. “If I’d known she was going to give us real freedom, it would have been different.”
“Get out.”
The pout twisted back to nastiness. “You’re going to die, Jared. All of you are going to die, and all the words in the Realm aren’t going to change that.” Brock bared his teeth in a smile. “Maybe once the High Priestess is done playing with Lia, they’ll let me have her for a while. I’d like to take a long, hard ride between her thighs.”
Jared clenched his fists and his teeth.
Hold it back. Keep it leashed. Striking out now would bring the Hayllians in faster, and Thera and Lia needed as much time as they could get to prepare this Queen’s gamble.
Looking a little disappointed at getting no reaction from Jared, Brock raised his hand in a mocking salute. Then he flinched and put
a hand to his head.
“Have to answer,” he mumbled. “Have to . . . summoned.” He turned and continued down the road to the landing place at a fast walk.
By the time Jared got back to the tavern, Thayne had taken the children away—but Garth had returned.
Blaed and Talon held Randolf back while the guard snarled threats and obscenities at the large man standing on one side of the room.
“Damn you, Jared,” Randolf shouted. “Tell them to let me go. Let me get rid of the bastard before he does any more harm.”
“He’s already gone.” Jared said fiercely. “It was Brock, Randolf. All the time, it was Brock. His Queen sold him into slavery. He sold himself to Hayll.” Weary, Jared rubbed his hands over his face. “You had the wrong man, but you were also right—Hayll’s pet is tainted.”
Looking past Jared, Randolf studied Garth as if seeing him for the first time. “He was a guard.”
A fierce intelligence filled Garth’s pale blue eyes. A huge fist thumped the large chest. “Mmmaster.”
“He was a Master of the Guard,” Jared said.
Randolf swore, but there was pain, not violence, in the words. “To do that to a Master . . .” he said softly.
“Let’s not waste time,” Jared said. “We’ve got to help Lia and Thera plan a defense against—”
“Jared—” Talon warned.
Before Jared could turn, Garth’s hand landed on his shoulder hard enough to make his knees buckle.
“Lllisten to Queen,” Garth said, giving Jared a little shake. “Queen sssmart. Confuses mmmales.”
“Confusing us is helpful?” Talon asked dryly.
Garth waved his other hand. Blaed prudently ducked.
“Hayll. All mmmales out there. Confuse mmmales here. Confuse mmmales there.” Garth gave them all a deadly smile. “Confuse Brock always. Sssmart Queen. You lllisten.”
Giving Jared a friendly whump on the back that tumbled him into Talon and Randolf, Garth left the room.
“Well,” Talon said after a moment, “he’s got a point. It’s damn hard to block someone’s moves if you can’t figure out how she thinks.”
“Yes,” Jared replied thoughtfully. Something Brock had said about links and psychic scents and Jewels kept teasing him, but its significance stayed just out of reach. “Let’s find out a little more about this Queen’s gamble our Ladies are planning.”
“Even if it confuses us?” Blaed said with a hint of a smile.
Something. Something. “Especially if it confuses us.”
Chapter Thirty
Krelis leaned back against the table, crossed his feet at the ankles, and studied the surly man before him. “You disappointed me, Brock. You didn’t live up to your side of the bargain.”
“I did,” Brock replied belligerently. “I did what I agreed to do. Wasn’t my fault there were problems that even you didn’t anticipate.”
Krelis crossed his arms to keep his hand away from his knife. “What kind of problems?”
When Brock took a step toward Krelis, two Opal-Jeweled Hayllian guards grabbed his arms and hauled him back.
Brock struggled uselessly for a moment.
Krelis caught a whiff of fear and found himself aroused by it. “What kind of problems?”
“A broken Black Widow who wasn’t broken,” Brock said, pouting. “A Warlord Prince who’d disguised what he was until we were well into the journey. Garth still having brains enough to figure out what the buttons were for and picking them up after I’d left them for the marauders to find. That damn Red-Jeweled nonman deciding to play Queen’s stud. You can’t blame me for any of that.”
“Perhaps not,” Krelis said. “But the fact is your inability to perform your task greatly inconvenienced the High Priestess—and there are penalties for inconveniencing the High Priestess of Hayll.”
“I did my part,” Brock insisted, trying to shake off the guards. “You’ve got the little bitch-Queen now.”
Krelis looked at the other four guards who had quietly entered the room. At his nod, the guards restraining Brock tightened their hold.
“But the inconvenience, Brock.” Krelis shook his head. “Some compensation has to be made for the inconvenience.” Smiling, he withdrew the large white feather from his leather vest and unsheathed his knife. “I have one more small task for you, and then our bargain will be complete.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“We’re going to build a psychic web,” Lia said in a voice that had all emotion washed out of it.
Jared glanced at the other men crowded into the tavern’s back room. Blank faces. Confused eyes. Talon rubbed the back of his neck and frowned at the chalk circle Lia had drawn on the table. Blaed looked at the ceiling, his eyes filled with wry humor.
Since Garth was the only one nodding as if that statement made sense, Jared wondered if he’d feel less confused if he banged his head against the table a few times.
Then he looked at Lia, and the trickle of amusement faded.
The Queen and the Black Widow who sat across from each other were suddenly strangers to him, filled with a wild unknown. There was something dangerous about the way they sat so still, so quiet.
“Jared, since you wear the darkest Jewel, you’re going to be the web’s focal point,” Lia said.
Great. Wonderful. Mother Night.
Jared shifted uneasily. “What’s it supposed to do?”
“It will give the weakest of you the protection of the strongest,” Thera said in that voice that made all the men shiver. “Through the strands of the web, all of you will be connected. A strike against any one of you will be absorbed by all of you. The Red Jewel will feed the web and keep it strong.”
“It sounds fine as a defense,” Talon said, “but Jared won’t be able to hold it long if they start unleashing their own Jewels.”
“They want Lia alive,” Thera said, staring at the circle drawn on the table. “They won’t risk a full attack until they have her.”
“Even if they do nothing, he still can’t hold it forever,” Talon argued. “And they’re not going to get bored and just go home.”
“Ten minutes,” Lia said. “Once the signal’s given, he only has to hold it for ten minutes.”
Only.
Jared wanted to laugh, but he was very afraid it would come out sounding hysterical. Didn’t they realize how many Hayllians were surrounding Ranon’s Wood?
Thera slashed a look in his direction—as if she’d heard the laughter. “You held Red shields against the marauders for that long.”
“There weren’t as many of them,” Jared said testily.
Thera shrugged. “They were fighting, always draining the shields. The Hayllians won’t be attacking with any strength. Alive, Lia is a valuable hostage. If they’d wanted her destroyed, the village and everyone in it would be gone by now.”
“When the Hayllians start to advance, everyone wearing the Jewels will provide a token resistance, gradually retreating toward the Coaches,” Lia said. “Jared will remain here in the tavern, where he can watch the road.”
“I can—” Jared began.
“Your task is to defend,” Lia said sharply.
“I don’t like it,” Randolf said, shaking his head. “We’re not going to achieve anything. Gaining a few more minutes won’t change the outcome of the battle.”
Thera’s eyes were ice with a hint of green. “You don’t have to like it, Warlord. You just have to obey.”
After silencing Randolf with a searing look, Talon fixed his gaze on Lia. “With respect, Lady, I say again—this web you and Lady Thera devised is an admirable protection, but it won’t get us out of here.”
Lia raised her chin. “Yes, it will.”
Frustrated, Jared raked his fingers through his hair. “How?”
They said nothing.
Seeing his own hurt mirrored in Blaed’s eyes, Jared pushed aside bruised feelings.
Blind trust. In the end, it always came down to blind trust because it was the u
ltimate test of the bond between a Queen and the males who serve her.
“It’s time to start,” Thera said, rising.
Silent, all the men except Jared, Talon, and Blaed left the room. When Lia rose, the three men formed a triangle around the two women, Talon automatically taking the point while Blaed and Jared each flanked his own Lady.
“Prince Talon, your presence is required,” Lia said when they stepped outside. She moved out of earshot and waited for the Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord Prince to join her.
Jared’s muscles quivered at the formal request. Before he could decide whether or not to insist on being part of that private conversation, Thera dragged him back inside the tavern.
She gave him a brittle smile that was probably meant to reassure him but, instead, turned his guts to water.
“I need some of your blood,” Thera said, holding up a small pewter cup. “For the web.”
Power sang in the blood. Life sang in the blood.
And trust, like love, was one of the heart’s songs.
Jared pushed up his sleeve and offered his wrist.
She was quick, gentle, and far more careful about healing the nick in his wrist than he would have been.
Giving him another brittle smile, Thera put the cover on the cup and dashed to the Coach she and Lia were using to prepare this Queen’s gamble.
Stepping outside again, Jared eased closer to where Lia and Talon were still standing.
“If that’s what you want,” Talon said grimly, “a fast—”
“I told you what I want from you,” Lia replied. “Exactly what I want. Will you do it?”
Jared eased closer. The fierce unhappiness in Talon’s face made his heart beat strangely, as if it couldn’t decide to pound until it burst or just fade until it stopped.
“Promise me, Talon.” Lia gave Talon’s hand an urgent squeeze.
Talon looked at their clasped hands. His fingers curled around hers. When he finally spoke, his voice was heavy. “I swear by the Jewels and all that I am that I’ll do exactly as you asked.”
Leaning forward, Lia swiftly kissed Talon’s cheek. “Thank you.”