by Sharon Green
“I don’t want anyone forgettin’ about those jobs we need to have done,” Vallant continued as he looked around at enthusiastic and impatient faces. “There will be more people with Sight magic at the party tomorrow night, so don’t feel discouraged if you don’t meet someone here who will fit into your Blendin’. And I’d like you all to consider movin’ into the palace, at least for a while. We still have plenty of room, and it will save you the trouble of trekkin’ on over here from wherever you’re stayin’. But that means we’ll need even more additions to the staff, so Wilant, don’t get so involved in lookin’ among Naran’s link groups that you forget about lookin’ for more staff.”
“We’ll get on that second thing,” Wilant answered with a laugh, and then the meeting broke up with everyone standing and starting to crowd around those with Sight magic. Vallant watched them for a moment, and then turned back to Rion and Lorand with a shake of his head.
“I have more items on that list I made, but we might as well save them for another time,” Vallant said with a sigh. “I was hopin’ they’d take the news well, but didn’t realize they’d take it so well that they’d stop listenin’.”
“It’s just as well,” Rion told Vallant with a chuckle. “We’ll have to bring our ladies up to date on what was discussed, and this way we’ll have less to report on.”
“I think we’d better add one more item to the report anyway,” Lorand said just as Vallant was about to agree with Rion. “I’ve found something in my wing that we all need to know about: There are journals written by members of Blendings from quite some time in the past. I haven’t had the chance to really read any of the journals, but I believe there are things discussed about Blendings that we might not yet know about.”
“Now, that’s a find,” Vallant said after sounding a low whistle of surprise. “Are they journals done by Earth magic members?”
“Not entirely,” Lorand said with a smile. “That means we all might want to institute a search in our libraries for similar volumes – as soon as we get more servants. If you’d all like to join me in my wing for dinner tonight, I’ll be able to tell you if I’ve found anything in the journals I already have.”
“We’ll certainly be there,” Rion answered, with Vallant nodding his agreement. “Speaking for myself, I’ll enjoy my meal a good deal more if I know in advance that it’s safe to eat. I drank the tea Naran and I sent for, but not without a certain amount of trepidation. If Naran hadn’t assured me the tea was safe, I might have decided to do without it. I can’t remember ever being this suspicious, even with that woman who pretended to be my mother encouraging my distrust.”
“Paranoia is easy to understand in this place,” Lorand assured a clearly worried Rion. “With the previous Five having been poisoned and the same thing almost done to us, it’s a wonder we can even trust ourselves. But don’t worry, we’ll arrange things to keep us safe until the trouble all dies down.”
“I hope so,” Rion said, putting his hand to Lorand’s arm in thanks for the reassurance. “I’d almost rather be back on the road and on my way to a confrontation with enemies.”
Lorand joined Vallant in assuring Rion they felt almost the same way, and then they left the meeting room to those who were meeting people in a different way. Lorand’s last thought as he walked out of the room was that he wasn’t sure Rion hadn’t had the right idea. Meeting an attack openly was a lot easier than worrying about who would next be trying to poison them or sneak up behind them with a knife…
Chapter 4
“Why are you still fussin’ around?” Vallant asked me from where he lay completely relaxed on my bed. “I haven’t seen you this nervous since we first met.”
“I’m not nervous, exactly, just a bit harried,” I explained, trying to give the conversation my attention. “My late husband always handled the details of any party he gave, and I was just another decoration added in. Now I have hundreds of people due in just a little while, and I’m not completely sure I’ve covered everything. What if I’ve overlooked something really important?”
“Then either the servants will take care of providin’ it, or we’ll do without it,” Vallant answered with a smile as he sat up. “No one is goin’ to make you leave the Blendin’ if all the forks aren’t properly lined up on the buffet table, so worryin’ is a waste of time. I expected you to relax when you found out we’ll have enough servants to do the servin’.”
“That was good news,” I agreed with a sigh, putting aside the list I studied to give Vallant something of a smile. “Wilant Gorl and his people have done a really great job in such a short time, going through and clearing that many applicants. Were they as careful as they were supposed to be?”
“They knew they had to be, so they got one of the other Blendin’s to help,” Vallant answered as he left the bed and walked over to my chair to bend and kiss my cheek. “They went through hundreds of the people who turned up when they found out we were hirin’, and eliminated the bad apples right from the start. They also found another of those renegade Guild people, and sent her to Jovvi for questionin’. Jovvi was feelin’ like her old self this mornin’ after all the sleepin’ she did, but the woman she questioned didn’t know where Ayl was.”
“I would have been surprised if she did know,” I said as I took Vallant’s hand. “Holdis Ayl didn’t strike me as a stupid man, and only a fool would send someone into our clutches when they knew where he was hiding. But he also should have known that the woman would be caught, so I wonder why he sent her.”
“Either he was testin’ the waters to see if we were too full of ourselves to take even basic precautions, or he’s usin’ her as a diversion.” Vallant grimaced as he pulled over another chair to sit in, making no effort to release my hand. “I have no idea what he would want us diverted from, so I hope he’s only testin’ our precautions.”
“But we can’t count on it,” I said with a weary nod. “We’ll have to be really alert tonight, but at least his people can’t come at us with unexpectedly strong talent. They have to use non-magical means, which all of us should be able to counter… Vallant, if we hired all that many people as servants, how are we going to pay them? We don’t have vast fortunes of our own to call on until we find the funds meant to support this part of the government.”
“Actually, we have all the funds we need,” Vallant answered with real amusement, his free hand stroking my hair. “We set some of Ristor Ardanis’s people on all the bankers, and it isn’t possible to lie about whose gold is where when you’re dealin’ with Sight magic. We already have more than one vast fortune at our disposal, and there’s more to come.”
“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten we did that even before we left that house we took over,” I said, finding it impossible not to yawn. “A lot of that gold will go toward paying for the shipments of food and other necessities the Guild people have arranged for, but there ought to be enough left over to pay for help around this place.”
“Yes, so it really is time for you to stop worryin’,” Vallant said, this time using his free arm to pull me a bit closer. “And we still have a couple of hours before the party is due to start, so why don’t we take some time for ourselves before I show you where the bathin’ room is in this wing of yours.”
“Bathing room?” I echoed, stopping short as I was about to kiss him. “We don’t have to go outside to use a bath house because there’s a bathing room right in this wing? Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want to lose your attention to my greatest rival,” Vallant grumbled, looking really annoyed with himself. “If I didn’t have such a big mouth, I wouldn’t be sittin’ here with two or three feet in it… Okay, let’s go show you that bathin’ room. Maybe you’ll have some time for me afterwards.”
He got to his feet and pulled me up with him by the hand he still held, but I couldn’t let it go at that. He’d been wonderfully patient the last two days while I gave all my attention to the party, and I wanted him to know
how much I appreciated that.
“I don’t see why we can’t exchange some time during my bath,” I murmured, leaning up to brush his lips with mine. “You haven’t suddenly become too good to share some bath water, have you?”
“I’ve always managed to force myself into sharin’ a bath with you, so I guess I can do it again,” he murmured back with a smile. “I hope you appreciate it when I make a sacrifice like this.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I assured him solemnly, ignoring the way his hand stroked down my back to pat my bottom. “And because you hate it so much, I’ll bathe as fast as I possibly can. So which way is the water?”
“Come on and I’ll show you,” he said with a sigh, taking my hand again to lead off. I had the feeling he’d been hoping to divert me for a short time, and share my bath only afterward. Lovemaking was more comfortable in a bed than in a bathhouse, but I felt confident that we’d somehow manage to enjoy the time.
“Did you use your talent to locate the water, or were you given that map you wanted?” I asked as we walked along. “And have you heard whether Lorand discovered anything we need to know in those journals he found?”
“I did get the map, and all these wings are laid out in the same way,” Vallant replied. “That makes findin’ things easier, and I set a scribe to copyin’ the map so we’d all have our own copies. Lorand hasn’t mentioned findin’ anythin’ of importance in the journals yet, but he made a different discovery in the same room: a large stack of scribes’ reports on the doin’s of the previous Five.”
“Does that mean someone had a sense of history?” I asked, glancing up at him with curiosity. “If so, the reports must be filled with comments about how great and clever those five people were.”
“No, actually Lorand said the reports looked like verbatim reports of various meetin’s and discussions,” Vallant responded, his own expression filled with mild curiosity. “He hasn’t gone through all of it yet, but he also located a stack of reports that had been very well hidden. If Lorand hadn’t noticed the presence of paper where no paper should have been, he said, those hidden reports would probably never have been found.”
“Maybe we can give him a hand with reading all that tomorrow,” I suggested, prodded by an odd and unexpected need. “I’d like to know more about those people who were here before us, and then maybe we’ll understand why they did what they did.”
“They did what they did because they wanted the power,” Vallant answered with a shrug of dismissal. “The one I faced at the end, the Spirit magic user, didn’t make a whole lot of noise, but he struck me as someone who was obsessed with the need to be in control. I’ve noticed over the years that those who need that badly to be in control usually suffered when others had the control.”
“That’s a point of view I can appreciate on a personal level,” I said, making a face. “Whenever someone else was in control of my life, I ended up with pain. But if your theory is right, then I should want to run everything in sight and I don’t. All I want is to be left alone by those who think they have a right to run my life.”
“You’re not showin’ or feelin’ the need to run things because you were able to learn the real lesson,” Vallant said, sending me a smile that seemed to be filled with fond pride. “The only one a person has to be in control of is him or herself, not the entire world. Bein’ in control of yourself lets you say no to the ones who take advantage, and also lets you find a way to make the decision stick. But if you let fear take control instead… “
“Then you have to run the world in order to feel safe,” I finished for him, following him through a doorway. Inside was a large and beautiful room with a marble bath rather than one made of wood, and the room even had windows. There were also a number of wide lounges and a few chairs that seemed to be made of cotton webbing, not to mention a bar, a place for a tea service, and a table probably meant for snacks.
“Those cabinets over there have towels and heavy cotton robes,” Vallant said, pointing to our left. “Those things that look like vases at the edge of the bath are filled with soap, and there’s only one thing missin’ right now: nicely warmed water. The servants with Fire magic have been workin’ on it, but they must be Lows because they haven’t gotten very far. Tepid is all you have, but that’s better than nothin’.”
“It is better than nothing, but there’s no reason to settle,” I said while walking closer to the bath and Vallant closed the door behind us. “I should be able to give the servants a hand… “
There was an awful lot of water in that very large bath, and warming it posed something of a problem. Once the water was already warm it could be kept like that with only a small amount of effort from above it, but the original warming needed to be done from below. I’d once forced bathing water to be warm with the help of other Highs in Fire magic, but right now there was just me and a lot of barely heated water. But there ought to be a way…
“Maybe that will do it,” I muttered as an idea came to me. Those woven patterns we’d done so much with… One of them seemed to suggest that if it was changed just a little and spread out at the bottom of the bath beneath the water…
“Whoa!” Vallant exclaimed as heavy steam suddenly began to rise from the water. “Whatever you did, I’m guessin’ it was a little too much. That water’s hot enough now to boil us like potatoes.”
“But I put barely any strength into it!” I protested, seeing that he wasn’t joking. “I never expected it to get that hot that quickly, which has to mean the pattern variation I used is a lot more powerful than I thought.”
“You varied one of the patterns you learned?” Vallant asked, now studying me rather than the water. “In what way did you vary it?”
“I … altered the method of braiding,” I said, trying to put a new action into words. “Here, let me show you instead. This is the way the pattern was originally braided, and this is the way I changed it.”
I used lengths of fire to illustrate what I meant, and when Vallant saw the altered pattern his brows rose high.
“If I’m followin’ that correctly, I think I can alter one of my own patterns in the same way,” he told me slowly. “The only thing I can’t figure out is what I’d use the new pattern for.”
“There’s still so much we don’t know that sometimes it makes me want to scream,” I said, letting the fires I’d used to show the patterns disappear. “And now I can’t even take a bath until that water cools down again. Me and my big ideas.”
“I believe I can be a small amount of help with that,” Vallant told my exasperation with a chuckle. “The situation just needs a bit of exchangin’.”
I was about to ask what he was talking about when the steam rising from the water suddenly turned into ordinary eddies in the air. That meant the water was still not, but not so hot that we’d be boiled.
“Judgin’ how much ice to bring down from the upper air was the hard part,” Vallant said with a smile when I made a sound of pleased surprise. “Shall we see if I did it right?”
I gave him a quick kiss to show my agreement – and gratitude – and then began to get out of my clothes. He did the same, and a pair of moments later we entered the bath hand in hand. The water was only a little warmer than usual, something my tired body was able to appreciate quite a lot. I washed quickly and then soaked some, floating comfortably in Vallant’s arms.
All right, so that was when I fell asleep. I’d been too busy working on the arrangements for the party to get a lot of ordinary sleep, but Vallant didn’t have to leave waking me until it was time to dress. Sometimes I wonder about that man…
Jovvi entered the huge ballroom on Lorand’s arm, her thoughts whirling with everything he’d recently shared with her. Some of it was just disturbing, but the rest needed to be also shared with the others.
“It looks like everyone Tamrissa invited decided to get here early,” Lorand commented as they walked, nodding to those people he knew. “And for a last minute affair, we seem to have a really good
turnout.”
“Most of these city people would have preferred to die under torture rather than miss this party,” Jovvi told him as she did her own nodding. “They’re the least bit intimidated by being in the midst of so many High and strong Middle talents, but an invitation to a ball at the palace is something they never expected to get. Even if they’re never invited again, they’ll still have this time to remember for the rest of their lives.”
“You’re still bothered by what you read,” Lorand said, and there was more concern than questioning in his tone. “I’m beginning to be sorry that I located all those hidden scribes.”
“Finding them was the only way to regain some privacy in our lives,” Jovvi told him with a headshake as she patted his arm. “What’s really bothering me is the way that Earth magic user of those five people thought he’d made himself safe from their observation. He killed some of them and put others to sleep, and by doing that considered himself safe from discovery.”
“He obviously had no idea that the scribes were all Spirit magic users and were closely linked,” Lorand said with a sigh. “I still don’t understand how they were linked, since it wasn’t in groups of five or tandem tens, but every time he eliminated or neutralized one, another secretly took that one’s place.”
“And they recorded everything he said and did, including that … time with his parents,” Jovvi added, fighting with all her strength to keep from being ill. “I’m really sorry I began to read that, but finding out about that special linking gives me something else than being sick to occupy my attention. It isn’t hard to do once you know about it, but I have a feeling the linkage has a purpose other than the one it was put to.”
“Doesn’t everything?” Lorand asked with a grimace that matched the one Jovvi felt on the inside. “Every time we learn something new, it becomes very clear how much more we don’t know. If it ever became possible to get my hands on the ones who first made using talent something to be kept secret… Well, let’s just say that I would not be gentle with them.”