And all because I rewired his wards. If Darius spent a few weeks studying here, he would know this himself. For such a cautious man, it seemed pretty stupid to me.
Little Brother, have you heard anything yet? Kieran asked from Ireland.
No, I sent back through his link. Looking through the diamond I put in the envelope that I gave to Harmond, I could see a group of about twenty uniformed or expensive-suited men gathering in a large conference room. But it looks like they’re about to. They’re cuttin’ it a little close. It’s only about forty minutes to dusk.
How many do you see?
About twenty, from the looks of it, I answered.
We’ll be over in a minute, he sent. Where are you?
In my office, I answered and closed the link, then I called Jimmy in and told Ellorn that we’d be away for awhile. Kieran and Ethan shifted over together looking as good as they did this morning. Peter had changed before he left after getting poultice-stained and bloodstained with me helping Darius. A tiny bit of violet flower turned the whole mixture bright purple.
Once I was finished and fell onto the other side of the bed to rest for a few minutes, Jimmy started peeling the poultice on his chest away slowly to show angry red welts where brutal seeping scabs were before. Sean watched with growing excitement as Jimmy rolled the now-black gelatinous gunk under and into the towel. He literally ran from the room through his father’s security team hovering nervously around the door. He grabbed a big pot from the kitchen and came back for hand towels from the bathroom, then knelt beside the bed and slowly started cleaning his dad off. I knew that need well.
Jimmy shifted in, hopping on one foot as he fought to put a boot on and dripping water on my floor. When he managed it and stepped into his puddle, he looked at me guiltily and grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Arwene was playful today.”
“He tossed you in the river?” Ethan asked laughing at him.
“No,” he answered, laughing with him. “He tossed the river at me! He might be only a few weeks old, but he’s strong!” We all laughed at that. We’d seen Arwene and Orlet pushing currents hard enough to form the channel for the other nymphs on the Great Claiming and they’d kept those going for miles away from a major water source.
“We have contact,” I said and pushed a reduced image of what I was seeing through the diamond out onto the conference table so everyone could see. The room was a standard auditorium room like at Dunstan’s, with several levels of fixed tables and another on a podium at the front. Erasable white boards plastered the walls behind the podium and the room was filled with electronics that were currently and conspicuously powered down. There were also several cameras and microphones that were inconspicuous and live.
Lord Daybreak? Harmond said while nervously holding the diamond in his palm.
“Be right with you, General Harmond. Just finishing something up,” I responded, then said to the others, “Why so many people?”
“Government never does anything small,” Peter commented. “There’s always a committee involved.”
“Messner isn’t there,” Kieran noticed.
“Let’s go already! I’m hungry,” Ethan whined, eliciting a few chuckles.
“Okay, okay,” I said standing up. “General Harmond, would you mind stepping back a few feet? We need a little more room.”
Harmond looked down at his open palm where he held the diamond, confused, then took a few steps backward. I shifted all of us over into the space between him and the table then sent the diamond back to the well.
“Good afternoon, General. It’s good to see you, again,” I said, extending my hand as I fried the remaining cameras and microphones and sealed the doors with the foundation Stone. Our exit was guaranteed, but there were three units of Marines with weapons ready just outside the doors that I didn’t want storming in on us. That might be ugly.
“Lord Daybreak!” Harmond stuttered, surprised by our appearance. “Welcome and thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Quite a gathering for a contract signing, General,” I commented, looking around the room. “What’s happening here?”
“My superiors have a few questions to ask before signing, sir,” he said apologetically.
I looked at the rather large wall clock as it ticked past three forty-one. “Not much time before the deadline for questions,” I said. “And I don’t believe I offered to answer any. Why should I?”
“You’re holding hostages, for God’s sake!” exclaimed another man in the front row, a two-star General named Perez. At least this room was ethnically diverse.
I took a slow step to the right and looked at the man around Harmond’s stiffened body. “Two points,” I said forcefully, brimming with anger. “One, I will not review details so that idiots in the peanut gallery can catch up to reality. And two, if I am insulted again, I will get very, very angry.”
Harmond didn’t know what to say when I slowly moved back. “Time is growing shorter, General,” I prodded him.
“We are just worried that… they are being… unduly persuaded…” Harmond stammered and fought for words to say what he thought Perez was trying to say in a very uncouth manner.
“Yeah, I wondered the same thing myself,” I told him. “Not being terribly well-educated in that realm, the only thing I could think of was possibly Stockholm Syndrome, but that really didn’t make any sense. Their real problem seems to be abandonment and they all have that in spades.”
“We just want to get some specialists to talk to them before they… emigrate,” Harmond said, gaining some courage from my more cordial tone.
“No, I offered that to Agent Messner earlier, but he was satisfied with his inspection prior to my offer. Otherwise it would have been part of the package.”
“So all you are offering to us is what was ours in the first place,” said another man, right side, second row in the middle. A brass eagle adorned his shoulder, Lt. Colonel Martinez, a Caucasian man.
“I’m offering you more than you have at the moment,” I said calmly. “And more than you can get against a fairly embarrassing public loss. I didn’t come here to argue, gentlemen. If you don’t wish to agree, don’t. My attorneys will contact you at some point in the future with subpoenas in hand. We can argue this in court properly.”
“So you have no interest in negotiating?” a man in a dark blue suit from the back row, far left side asked.
“And you are?” I asked, looking at him.
“An interested party,” was his response. He had a perfect poker face. Even his aura was calm, still telling but calm.
“A rather rude answer, Mr. Dominick,” I said, then wrapped portals around him and his chair, dropping him in front of me from a height of four feet. He gawked up at me when he stopped bouncing. “It borders on insulting. I’ve already negotiated and made my best offer. You now have seven minutes left to accept.”
“How do you expect this cooperative effort to root out this conspiracy to work?” Harmond asked me, sidling up at an angle to distract me from Dominick. It was an able attempt with a valid question.
I chuckled a little and said, “We will have to talk about that and come to further agreements on what will be acceptable with each other. You will try to have more restrictions than I will in all likelihood, because I am an incredible security risk for you. And at the same time, I don’t care how much you spend on night vision goggles or whatever. So, we’ll talk.”
I looked at the wall clock and felt Dominick follow my gaze. My fingernails suddenly became tremendously interesting to me as I leaned back against the table on my left elbow.
“Is Darius still sleeping?” Peter asked innocently.
“Yes, but I’m going to wake him when we get back,” I said. “He needs to eat and he’ll be hungry. Are we having dinner together? I can see what the brownies can do and have it in my room tonight.”
“Yeah!” Ethan said enthusiastically. “Your floor is always fun.”
“I accept, too,” Kieran said, actin
g formally. “As long as I get to play on the Road, too.” He winked at me.
“We agree,” Dominick said, standing and straightening his tie.
“Sign the contract,” I said. “You have two minutes left. A verbal agreement is not legally binding in such cases and the written agreement disappears promptly at four.”
“My briefcase, now!” Dominick yelled as he ran for the stairs, pointing at his former seat. Several men shuffled around on the floor looking for it. The farthest found it and shoved it into the waiting arms of the nearest to the stairs who ran to meet Dominick halfway up. He was still on the stairs as the clock started on the last ten seconds before four. Harmond watched the clock while everyone else in the room watched Dominick slam the case down on the nearest table.
He noticed me watching him and met me, saw my tiny little smile start. Back to the clock, the long red hand stayed on nine seconds till while the blue-suited man worried the locks on the case, forgetting his own combinations. Harmond turned to watch Dominick after the snap of the locks. The three contracts were scattered in the bottom. He scrambled to gather then separate them on the table.
Harmond looked back at the clock. Nine seconds till four, it read. His eyes shot down to me, but he kept his face up, like he was watching the clock. I met his eyes with the same small wry grin. I wanted this to work, too, so yes, I held the clocks and I held the contracts and the treaty in place past the deadline. It wasn’t too bad morally since I did have a verbal agreement.
Dominick signed the contracts one by one and I went behind him, signing and embossing them with Daybreak’s sigil. Then I stacked them, brought them into my cavern, replicated the stack twice, and pushed the three stacks back out onto the table. I picked up the first stack, the originals actually. Nodding to Dominick, I turned back to my brothers.
“Pete, you coming?” I asked, smiling.
“You bet!” he answered. “Can I invite my folks?”
“You kidding? Who else is gonna keep mine busy?” I said, laughing. Dominick was still staring at the two stacks of paper on the table when I turned back. “General, who is to be your representative in the discussions regarding further investigations?”
“I don’t believe that has been decided yet,” Harmond said. “Perhaps you could contact me on Monday.”
“Your office number, say ten-ish?” I suggested.
“Certainly, Lord Daybreak,” Harmond said, holding out his right hand. I shook hands with him. He had a firm grip and did not commit the confidence pump.
“Peter, I believe you have the copy of the computer records, right?” I asked him.
“Yep,” he said cheerfully, straightening up. He turned and whipped a huge handkerchief from his pocket. Holding it up by two corners, he turned to the audience, grinning, and showed both sides. Laying the cloth out carefully on the table, he patted down any wrinkles and carefully stretched the handkerchief.
Kieran leaned on my shoulder, snickering, and whispered, “What is he doing?”
“Magic, I think,” I whispered back as Peter hammed it up with flourishes. Even Jimmy was watching bemused—he knew this wasn’t how this was done and he knew less than I did.
“What’s he doing?” Ethan asked, latching onto my other arm and leaning around me.
“Seth says it’s magic,” Kieran answered, almost snickering again.
“They both need remedial classes, then,” Ethan whispered, chuckling.
“Would you three shut up!” Peter snapped. There wasn’t any anger in it with the grin and the twinkling brown eyes. We were his distraction in his birthday party magic act and as he turned to chastise us, he jerked the cloth free of the table, sidestepped in front of it, shifted the four stacks of blu-ray disks from his office in Gilán and glowered at us.
“There it was! Magic! I saw it!” Ethan nearly shouted gleefully as he pointed. “I feel better now.” He stood up straight, smiling at Peter and started clapping. Kieran and I joined him and a few seconds later, a smattering around the room changed to a deluge. Peter bowed to the military in Vegas-style.
“Are you through, Mr. Blackstone?” I asked with a crooked grin when the noise died away some.
“One more, I think,” he said excitedly. “But I’ll need a little help from First.” He stepped over and started whispering in Jimmy’s ear conspiratorially.
“I think I know where this is going,” I said, turning to Harmond. “Until Monday, General Harmond.”
“For my next trick,” Peter called out loudly to the room, stepping forward as Jimmy walked behind him and closer to us. “I will make five men completely disappear in a giant ball of blue fire.” I felt Kieran and Ethan release their holds on reality so that Peter could move them, so I followed suit with Jimmy and me. Jimmy tugged slightly on his link and erupted in fire, letting it run along the floor and engulf us at frightening speed. This was his presence, an emblem of his position and not a real burning fire, so we were perfectly safe, but Peter shifted us over to his balcony as it hit its highest effect. Jimmy quelled it immediately and fell against the railing laughing hard.
“What was that all about, anyway?” Kieran asked Peter as we sat at the table, relaxing and still laughing ourselves some at his antics.
“Gotta get your kicks somewhere,” Peter answered shrugging. “Besides, they were already afraid of Seth and they don’t know what to think about us yet. Harmond and Barnett think we’re nuts anyway. And we needed a distraction to settle their nerves.”
“A billowing gas fire in the middle of the Pentagon will settle their nerves?” I asked in disbelief, standing. “You have an odd sense of stability there, Pete. I need to go see about dinner. Y’all wanna see if our parents want to come over? Might be too late for dinner for them, though. Invite anybody you want and let me know, okay?”
“Sure. How long, do you think?” Peter asked.
“Ooh, don’t know,” I said. “I am just springing this on them. Maybe an hour, hour and a half? I’ll talk to Ellorn and see. Worse comes to worst, I’ll order out at a few places.”
“Works for me,” Kieran said, standing as well.
“An hour! I’m already starved,” Ethan whined.
“Better have Gordon hide the horses, then,” I said as I walked through Peter’s dining room. Ellorn, would you meet me outside Peter’s, please? I have another favor to ask. Jimmy followed me out.
Yes, Lord Daybreak, right away, Ellorn called cheerfully through the geas.
“Good evening, Lord,” Ellorn greeted us as we walked out of the Borland suites. Another brownie stood beside him, a cousin of Zero’s named Zed. I managed to contain my giggles over his name this time, but it was really cute.
“Evenin’, Ellorn,” I said, smiling to cover the chuckles lurching in my belly. “I’m afraid I rather rashly offered dinner this evening in my room and I wonder if I might persuade you and yours into some cooking. I know it’s short notice, especially for so many people, so if it’s too difficult I understand.”
“Certainly, Lord Daybreak, we’d be delighted!” exclaimed Ellorn. “What kind of menu would you like and what kind of time frame?”
“I’ll leave the menu to you and First,” I answered. “I told my brothers about an hour. You can use my kitchens if you want. The Fullers and Phillips will be there, so the Worldgem will be hidden, and this will be very casual so the formal dining rooms are off limits. Y’all can pick a nice place to set up tables and chairs, if ya want. I’m opening the door now.”
“As you wish, Lord. An hour will be plenty of time,” Ellorn squealed eagerly. Zed was quivering, literally quivering, in anticipation at getting started.
“Thanks, guys, I really appreciate this,” I said, grinning down at the nearly bouncing tiny men. “First will show you around. Ask him if you need anything and I’ll check back shortly.”
They disappeared quickly down the Road. Tiny, delicate pulses pushed up and sped them along. They’re pushing me! Jimmy sent over our link, laughing and nearly falling in the turn at
the main concourse. He was used to much faster, but he was caught up in their excitement.
I grinned and started down the Road in the other direction. Alsooth, I sent through the geas. Would you and Major Byrnes collect our seventeen problem children together? I need to have a word with them.
Yes, Lord Daybreak, Alsooth responded, again cheerfully. There was suddenly quite a bit of traffic on the Road, though none of it was against me. It gave me a chance to amp up the speed. A bit of a letdown only because I was there almost as fast as shifting but very exhilarated. I felt like I was glowing as I wandered into the barracks.
Byrnes was sending them to a conference room off of the Day room, but only five had arrived yet so I wandered the halls toward the kitchens to check supply levels. Dinner service was winding down and Brinks was walking among diminished shelves with a clipboard, frowning. There were no brownies present at the moment and no one noticed me, which was kind of nice. I headed quietly for Brinks.
“Schaffley, Byrnes wants you in the Day room, pronto!” a man yelled from the door. “Good evening, Lord Daybreak.” Cat was out of the bag now. Everyone froze for a second then turned quickly.
“Good evening, sergeant,” I answered him kindly. “Lt. Brinks. How are we looking for tomorrow?”
“Um, not so good, Lord Daybreak,” he said uneasily. “We’re out of many things now. We won’t make it far past breakfast, I’m afraid.”
“Well, we’ll have to forage through grocery stores tomorrow,” I said. “Most of the larger distribution companies won’t be open on a Saturday. Then we’ll start looking at more permanent arrangements on Monday.”
Brinks’ head shot up, his face and eyes excited and hopeful. “Does that mean…?” he asked, stopping before he could actually ask the question.
“It means you need to eat, lieutenant,” I said, “and I need to feed you. And instead of worrying about what to do about what you don’t have, I need you to worry about what you need to get from the supply sources available to us over the next two days. We’ll be using teams of your men to get it, too, so think in terms of what you can carry, if possible.
Sons (Book 2) Page 74