by Sharon Green
“It’s a nice view,” Vallant said, feeling something of surprise. “These wings obviously radiate away from the palace proper, so there's grass and flowers and pathways down there in between. There are a couple of ways to get out there that I can see from here, and beyond the wings and a stretch of grass there’s also a very high wall made of stone.”
“Good,” Tamrissa said, a glance showing Vallant that she now dipped a pen into a bottle of ink. “When it stops raining, we can enjoy the sunshine without being bothered. Let’s see, what do I need first…?“
Vallant smiled as he opened the third and fourth windows before going to his own desk. Tamrissa was so involved with planning for her party that it would take a serious attack against them to distract her. Vallant much preferred the thought of her distracted to the thought of them being attacked, so he searched his own desk rather than trying to insist that they share the pretty view right now. He and Tamrissa would have plenty of time to share things, and trying to rush the process would do no more than ruin it.
There was paper and ink in Vallant’s desk as well, not to mention a selection of pens. One of those pens seemed to be made of gold, and Vallant shook his head as he chose a less ornate instrument to use. If he ever decided to impress someone silly, he now had the means to do it…
Vallant had only just started on his own list of things to do when a female servant appeared with the tea service he’d asked for. She rolled the service in on a cart, took it over to a table standing between Vallant’s desk and the windows, and then began to arrange things on the table. It was too familiar a process for Vallant to pay attention to, so he went back to making his list. The first thing he needed to do was get all their Blendings into the palace. If for no other reason, they deserved to be told first about Naran’s place in the scheme of things…
“Your tea, Excellence,” Vallant heard, causing him to look up. The woman – girl, really – had spoken in a low and sultry voice, a good match to her dark and sultry appearance. She was really quite pretty if not downright beautiful, but the filled cup she offered wasn’t proper.
“You should be offerin’ the first cup to the lady,” Vallant told the girl, nodding to Tamrissa where she sat writing at the other desk. “Where I come from ladies are always served first, and there’s no reason not to reintroduce the practice here.”
“As you wish, Excellence,” the girl acknowledged with a smile added to her throaty voice. “But tea is all I’m able to offer the lady. You, though… It would be my great pleasure to offer you a lot more than tea.”
The girl moved her body in so suggestive a way that Vallant had no doubt about what else she offered. It was so surprising to have the girl come on to him so strongly that he hesitated before answering, and the hesitation was misinterpreted.
“If you’ll send the lady away, I can begin to show you exactly what I mean,” the girl told him in a murmur, a hint of triumph gleaming in her dark eyes. “The lady is pretty enough, but I can please you much more than she ever could.”
“I doubt that,” Vallant said in a normal voice as he leaned back in his chair. “The lady isn’t just pretty, and she isn’t just a lady. She’s another member of my Blendin’, and someone who happens to be very important to me even beyond that. Give her that cup of tea, and then you can leave.”
“Of course, Excellence,” the girl acknowledged with an odd sort of smile. “I understand how that works, so I’ll come back when the lady goes to her own wing.”
“You’re not understandin’ me,” Vallant said to the girl’s back as she turned to give Tamrissa the cup of tea. Tamrissa’s attention had also been taken from her writing, and the lady of Fire now inspected the serving girl with narrowed eyes. “There’s nothin’ ‘workin’ here, and the only time you’ll come back will be to do some ordinary kind of servin’. Have I stated my position clearly enough?”
“You might also tell her that when I do go back to my own wing, you’ll be going with me,” Tamrissa put in as the cup of tea was set down in front of her. “Not to mention the fact that if I find her coming on to you again, she won’t like what happens to her.”
“She’s probably just doin’ what our predecessors wanted her to do,” Vallant said hastily. The girl had frozen in the act of turning away from Tamrissa, her eyes widened and her face having paled. “It will be a while before they all understand completely that we’re not like the usual run of Seated Blendin’s.”
“Well, this one might get the idea a bit faster,” Tamrissa said dryly as the frightened girl began to back toward the door. “She actually reached to the power a minute ago, but it’s her bad luck that her talent is Fire. I don’t know what she meant to do with her ability, but if I decide it was the wrong thing… “
The girl whimpered before turning to run, and a heartbeat later she was gone from sight. Vallant heard her steps disappearing up the hall, and when they faded into complete silence he shook his head.
“I think we better make findin’ new people to staff this place a top priority,” he said to a still-annoyed Tamrissa. “The servants we have now may not be the sort to do us harm, but harm isn’t the only thing we can do without.”
“And some of those other things can generate harm, at least for the ones who try them,” Tamrissa said, actually in agreement. “I can believe that those useless, so-called nobles cut a swath through the serving women, but I still don’t like it. She could at least have waited to be asked.”
“She was probably tryin’ to get her bid in before any of the others,” Vallant suggested with a sigh. “It happens to be a sad fact that the girl sharin’ her master’s bed is usually the last one to lose her job. Now I’m wonderin’ if the male servants in your wing will do the same.”
“If they know what’s good for them, they better not,” Tamrissa said, raising her head again to look directly at Vallant with a smile. “I have my own way of discouraging them, but I get the feeling that that isn’t what they have to worry about.”
“Very perceptive of you,” Vallant responded in a murmur with a faint smile of his own. “I’m not a lady, so I don’t have to worry about actin’ ladylike. I think I’ll have a cup of tea, and then see if any of the other Blendin’s have arrived yet. We can get a lot of projects started, and then Jovvi will have less to worry about when she wakes up tomorrow.”
“We’ll probably have to tie her up before she understands that she doesn’t have to do everything herself,” Tamrissa said with a large and gusty sigh. “I don’t know what we’d have to do to get her to realize that nothing at all will be accomplished if she collapses from exhaustion.”
“We’ll try showin’ instead of tellin’,” Vallant said as he rose from the desk to get his tea. “If that doesn’t work, we just may have to try tyin’. We’ll talk to the others about it.”
“Good idea,” Tamrissa said before going back to her list. Vallant got his tea, then went back to his own list. They could get started with some of the things needing to be done, but a number of the items on his list would have to wait until they were officially Seated. If they were Seated…
Lorand was in the midst of investigating his discovery when the servant appeared in the doorway of the sitting room he’d found. The servant knew Lorand was aware of him, but no words came until Lorand looked up from the book he held.
“Please excuse the intrusion, Excellence, but a message has come from the Excellence Vallant,” the servant said with a nervous bow. “He asks that if you aren’t immersed in something vitally important, would you please join him in the outer meeting room. I’ve been instructed to tell you that the – the – other Blendings have arrived.”
“Don’t worry, you and everyone else will soon get used to talking about Blendings in the plural rather than in the singular,” Lorand told the man with amusement, closing the book he held. “In fact, you might even soon belong to a Blending of your own. Would you like that?”
“I … find the situation impossible to imagine, Excellence,” the
servant replied, his eyes wide with the nervousness causing his hands to tremble. “Would – would something like that be – required of me?”
“Of course not,” Lorand assured the man, rising to walk to him and clap him gently on the shoulder. “No one will be forced into a Blending any more than they’ll be forced not to join one. Things really will be changing for the better.”
The man continued to look privately skeptical, so Lorand dropped the subject and sent the servant to alert Jovvi’s link groups where they’d been settled in her wing. Lorand saw to gathering his own link groups, took one final look at Jovvi where she slept in the main bedchamber of his wing, and then led the way to the meeting Vallant had called. Lorand had used the help of his link groups to put Jovvi to sleep, and it was a measure of her exhaustion that he’d been able to do it – even with help. They’d all grown much too strong to be able to touch one another, but Jovvi had been pushing herself much too hard.
The meeting room was already full of people by the time Lorand and his groups arrived, but it wasn’t hard for Lorand to make his way through the throng to reach Vallant and Rion.
“Jovvi is asleep, I take it,” Rion said when Lorand reached them. “If she weren’t, she would surely have come with you.”
“Yes, she’s asleep, and she’ll stay that way until tomorrow morning,” Lorand answered with a nod. “I made her eat something first, so skipping tonight’s meal won’t hurt her. Where are Naran and Tamrissa?”
“Vallant tells me that Tamrissa is deep into plans for tomorrow night’s party,” Rion answered with a smile. “Naran, on the other hand, has discovered that my wing has a bathing room, so it isn’t necessary to go out to a bath house. She’s currently taking a great deal of pleasure in soaking in warm water.”
“And because the ladies’ clothin’ has been retrieved and fetched here, she’ll have somethin’ clean to wear when she comes out,” Vallant put in with a small laugh. “It’s lucky that Tamrissa hasn’t found out about the bathin’ room yet. Between that and her party list, we’d likely never see her.”
“It seems that everyone has now arrived,” Rion observed, and Lorand turned to see Jovvi’s link groups coming in. “Would you like to begin this meeting, Vallant?”
“Yes, because we have a lot to do,” Vallant responded, his tone pitched loud enough for everyone to hear. The small conversations quieted as everyone took seats, and Vallant nodded. “Thank you for givin’ me your attention. The first thing we have to discuss is puttin’ a Blendin’ in charge of interviewin’ people to staff this monster of a place. It won’t be an easy job because we’ll need hordes of servants – and we have to be on the lookout for renegade Guild members.”
People exclaimed over that comment, so Vallant explained what had happened for those who hadn’t been present for the attack and subsequent interview.
“When they went to arrest the man Ayl, they found he’d already gone to ground,” Vallant concluded. “That means we can expect to trip over his people until we catch them all, so everyone stay alert. They may be after our Blendin’, but some of them may decide that any High talent is fair game.”
“Our Blending will do the interviewing,” Wilant Gorl called from the middle of the room. “There are a lot of unemployed servants around now, so we should be able to take our pick. What do we do with the ones who don’t measure up – and what do you consider not measuring up?”
“We don’t want anyone who isn’t capable of bein’ loyal,” Vallant answered with a nod to show that he’d been asked a good question. “That even means someone who’s willin’ to take silver or gold to look the other way. We need our people to be alert against intruders, because the guardsmen can’t do it all. If they could, those three never would have gotten into the palace in the first place.”
“I think it might also be a good idea to change the arrangement of who the servants report to,” Lorand put in. “Jovvi mentioned something about having every group of five servants being known by sight to ‘middle’ supervisors. That way a strange face is noticed more quickly, and something can be done about it.”
“We should be able to do that if we put the system in immediately,” Wilant agreed with a thoughtful nod after having exchanged glances with his Blendingmates. “But you still haven’t said what we do with the ones who don’t measure up.”
“Unless the person is seriously deranged, just turn him or her loose,” Rion answered, giving the decision they’d all pretty much decided on earlier. “If they are seriously deranged, there are civil authorities to see to the matter. Once things settle down we can all make ourselves available to help them, but for now they’ll have to cope on their own.”
“That’s because we’re goin’ to need another three Blendin’s to supplement the posted guards,” Vallant took up the explanation. “Again, this will only be necessary until things settle down, but there’s goin’ to be a lot of craziness before that happens. We mean to have some High talents start to teach the people how to use their own talents properly.”
“So soon?” someone asked in the middle of everyone’s comments of surprise. “Shouldn’t that wait until after you’ve been Seated?”
“We still aren’t sure we will be Seated,” Vallant answered after exchanging glances with Rion and Lorand. “There’s somethin’ you all need to be told, but we’ll get to that in a little while. First you need to know that we’re havin’ a party tomorrow night, and we’ll be invitin’ everyone in the city who’s part of or represents even a middle-sized group. All of you are also invited, so please pass the word to any of our people who couldn’t make this meetin’.”
“About time we had some fun,” someone female in the group called out, and the others all agreed with enthusiasm and laughter.
“Yes, it is, and in more ways than one,” Vallant agreed with a grin and a chuckle of his own. “The next thing all you members of link groups need to think about is formin’ Blendin’s among you. Just because you’re a member of a link group doesn’t mean you can’t also belong to a Blendin’.”
There was a bit of stunned silence then, but Lorand was glad to see more delighted surprise than shock. Then a babble of comments started, with one voice rising above the rest.
“We didn’t think you’d be able to give up our help so soon,” a man called out. “Are you sure you aren’t rushing things?”
“You’re right, we’re not ready to give up the help of our link groups,” Vallant said with a nod for the man. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t start lookin’ around and maybe even gettin’ together and startin’ to practice. Once people know what they can and can’t do with their talents they’ll be formin’ Blendin’s, so there’s no reason for all of you to wait.”
“And every reason not to,” Rion added in a more serious way. “Until we have a solid core of Middle talent guardsmen trained to keep the peace, we'll need High talent people to prevent any accidental – or not so accidental – disasters. Some people are bound to get drunk on the Blending experience and do something foolish, and we’ll be responsible for making that foolishness possible.”
“So we’ll also be responsible for keeping the damage to a minimum,” Wilant Gorl said with a sigh and a nod. “It looks like interviewing servants really will be the easiest job any of us faces. But what’s this about the possibility that you won’t be Seated? If anyone thinks there’s a stronger Blending around than yours, they can take our word that there isn’t.”
“Strength won’t be the problem,” Vallant said after exchanging glances with Rion and Lorand again. “Okay, it’s time we told all of you somethin’ you don’t know about us. We’ll be announcin’ it tomorrow night to everyone, but you have the right to hear it first.”
“What Vallant means is that we won’t be a Seated Five,” Rion took up the explanation with something of a smile. “You all know my lady Naran, but what you don’t know is that she isn’t simply my lady. She’s become part of our Blending, a full part.”
“You’ve d
oubled up on one of the aspects?” Wilant Gorl asked with an incredulity echoed by everyone else. “How did you do that, and which aspect is it?”
“No, we haven’t doubled up,” Rion answered with a small cough. “The truth of the matter is there’s an aspect no one has been aware of until now, and it’s one that the rest of you can also add to your Blendings. Naran has what we call Sight magic, the ability to see a short way into the future.”
This time Lorand noticed that the stunned silence did contain what looked like shock. It would have been nice to have Jovvi’s help to soothe everyone down, but in her absence words would have to do.
“The people with Sight magic kept their existence a secret because the first Fivefold Blending tried to enslave them,” Lorand supplied, speaking gently and calmly. “They’ve told us they know we won’t do the same, so they’re finally coming out into public view. None of you has met the members of Naran’s link groups, but you might want to take the time to do just that.”
When Lorand gestured to the people sitting at the back of the room, there was a small hesitation before everyone else turned around to look. Their mild distress and confusion was met with friendly and merry smiles and waves from the people in Naran’s link groups, which went quite a long way to calming people down.
“That’s right, they’re not three-headed monsters,” Rion said with a touch of amusement. “They’re just as human as the rest of us, and most of them are as willing to join a Blending as Naran was. Is there anyone here who wants nothing to do with them?”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Wilant Gorl responded with a snort after exchanging soft words with the members of his Blending. “This is the most exciting thing we’ve heard since we learned to Blend. Is the meeting over? We’ve got some introducing of ourselves to do.”
“In a little while,” Vallant answered with a laugh, obviously as relieved as Rion looked and Lorand felt. Most of the others had laughed aloud and agreed with Wilant, which made Lorand grateful to be among such open-minded people. If that had been Widdertown folk…