by Jan Stryvant
"They have kidnapped our people, Mr. Li. What would you have us do?"
"What they've asked you to do. Free your lycans and be done with them. You thought you had a winning strategy against our opponent. You were wrong. He is obviously resourceful, and he is determined."
"He is without honor! A man like that cannot prevail!" Mr. Wang said.
Mr. Li laughed. "You would impugn the honor of a man you have not met? You of all people, Mr. Wang? You came up with a strategy to avoid honorable confrontation, as Mr. Saad has already pointed out."
"But how do we know he will treat fairly with us?" Mr. Lee said. "As our fellow has pointed out, once we release our lycans, we are left empty-handed."
"Give them to me."
"What?"
"Your lycans. Give them to me. All of them. I will then treat with this gentleman on your behalf. If I do not get your people back, you know who I am and where I am."
"You would take this risk?" Mr. Wang said.
"The Dragon Triad is well known for how it treats those that betray it, Mr. Wang. I would take this duty on, as a favor to each of you, to ensure that certain business obligations of mine and my associates would not become entangled in this sordid affair." Mr. Li stood up. "Time is pressing, gentlemen. I will have my people stop by your compounds an hour from now. Please have your lycans ready, all of them," Li warned.
"And what will we owe you for this service?" Mr. Wang grumbled.
"Oh, it will not be too onerous, do not fear."
"But we will still owe you," Mr. Lee said.
"I am taking all of the risk here, am I not? If any party should decide not to deal fairly, it will be the Dragon Triad that will have to set things straight, is that not true?"
Mr. Lee and Mr. Saad both nodded and stood up.
"You are correct, Mr. Li. I will return home and make the arrangements," Mr. Lee said.
"I will do the same. Thank you, Mr. Li. I will remember this kindness," Mr. Saad said.
"Well, Mr. Wong?" Mr. Li asked, and all three of them looked at him.
Mr. Wong sighed heavily. "Very well. I will not be the one to upset the balance. But I want it understood, if we do this, no lycans are ever to set foot in Seattle again! I will not go through this a second time. If they mean to stay out of our business, they can stay out of our city."
Li nodded. "Fair enough. I shall return with your people by nightfall."
Chad smiled and shook hands with Qian Li. "I'm impressed, Mr. Li. I let you go, and no less than two hours later, you show up here with all of my people. I do believe this balances the scales."
"Only balances them?" Li inquired, looking at Chad.
Chad laughed. "Oh, don't try to tell me you didn't bend them over a barrel for your help! I'm sure they're all heavily in your debt now!"
"Well, always better to deal with the devil you know than the one you don't." Li chuckled.
"Especially if that devil is a round-eye, right?" Chad asked, grinning.
"I see you understand, Mr. Chad. I hope you're not upset over the prohibition on lycans in Seattle."
Chad shook his head. "We got through this without any bloodshed; for that alone, it's a price worth paying."
"You know, I could use a man like you, Mr. Chad."
"I appreciate the compliment, but I'm not exactly a free agent, Mr. Li. Just as I'm sure you have your own leader you must follow, I have mine."
"Ah, the good ones are always taken, are they not?"
"That's because we're the good ones. Have a good day, Mr. Li."
"Until the future, Mr. Chad."
"So, where to next?" Max asked as she watched Mr. Li, who was apparently the head of the Dragon Triad in Seattle, walk out the door.
"Denver. Ryan's already cleaned up Spokane and will wait for us in Bend."
"What's in Denver?"
"Maitland and the other army. He's dealing with Phoenix right now."
"And then what?"
"And then, we start work on the rest of the country, of course." Chad said with a smile.
Wakeup Call
Duncan Roberts smiled and nodded to other national heads as they came into the room and joined him. All of them noticed the table, which had for many decades been a long straight one, which the Vestibulum would sit at the head of, had been replaced with a very large, round table.
"Thank you for all coming today, Lady and Gentlemen," Duncan said, standing up.
"What's going on here? What happened to the old table?" Todd Adams, the head of the Vestibulum, said.
"The Council of Sapientia has always championed equality at these meetings, Todd," Duncan said with a smile, "so we're back to using a table that reflects that."
"You're not in charge here, Duncan," Todd warned.
"Oh? I called this meeting. Not you, Todd. Everyone is here at my invitation."
"Well, where am I to sit? I don't see any name tags!"
"Wherever you wish. It's a round table, no seat is better than any other, and I see no reason for me to tell reasonable adults where they must sit."
Duncan did his best not to gloat as Todd glared at him and, pulling out a chair, he dropped into a seat across the table from him.
With the issue of where the Vestibulum was going to sit resolved, the rest of the chairs filled up fairly quickly. Perkins from Eruditio sat beside Duncan, while Marson from the Ascendance sat a few seats further over, but still closer to Duncan than to Todd.
Interestingly enough, the leader of the Lux sat next to Duncan, with the Sorceress Guild representative sitting next to him, and the head of Goliard beside her. Those last two seemed a lot more friendly than Duncan could recall ever having seen before, so perhaps the rumors of an alliance between the two weren't idle speculation.
Totis Viribus was there, as was the leader of the Tall Men, and many of the other minor councils. Interestingly enough, no one sat within two seats of either side of Todd. The Vestibulum, and Todd, had spent decades at the top, and even though they had only fallen to second, and mainly only here in America, their isolation from the others spoke volumes.
"Now that everyone is seated, let me begin."
"One moment!" Todd interrupted. "I have something to say."
"Then you can say it when it is your turn to speak!" Duncan said, leaning forward. "I called this meeting, not you."
"But the Vestibulum leads!"
"Not anymore, they don't! And before you make any threats as to future actions, I would take a moment to remind you that all of your recent actions have met with failure, and no one here sitting at this table today sees any sign that this will change.
"Now, before I was so rudely interrupted, I was going to say that we have a number of serious issues before us."
"That damn werelion," Marson grumbled.
"Right now, he is the least of our issues," Duncan continued, and noticed everyone was looking at him.
"The President of the United States has asked the Department of Justice, along with the Senior Justices on the Supreme Court, to reinterpret the Treaty of York."
Duncan looked around at the stunned faces, which was immediately followed by a babble of voices as they all went on about how the President couldn't do that, and other assorted nonsense. He gave them a minute before he tapped on the table to regain their attention.
"Regardless of what you may or may not think, this is going to happen, and there is nothing we can do about it."
"What's he going to do?" Gloria from the Sorceress Guild asked.
"He's going to redefine it so that lycans are no longer considered property."
"What! He can't do that!" Marson said.
"Actually, he can. If you look at the treaty, it's never explicitly stated that they're our property, they're just referred to as 'servants', and the definition of servant here in the United States is not that of slave.
"Now as the keepers of our traditions, Sapientia has already sent a letter to the courts supporting this decision and telling them of the recent chang
e to our traditions."
"What! You had no right!" Todd yelled, standing up.
"We had every right. The keeping of the traditions is our role, regardless of where we stand. It has always been that way, and will always be that way," Duncan retorted, and had to admit to a small measure of satisfaction, as all the other leaders nodded their heads in agreement.
"Wait," Gloria spoke up, "you already changed the tradition on keeping slaves, why is this an issue?"
"Because two hundred and fifty years ago, when we met here in York with the government to discuss and agree to the treaty that bears this town's name, we were the ones dictating the terms." Duncan sighed heavily and shook his head.
"Due to many decades of complacency and poor leadership, we have lost much of the power and prestige we once held. Now the government is dictating terms to us."
Duncan withheld a smile as everyone turned to look at Todd, and the expressions on their faces were not kind. Duncan could only imagine that he was hearing the last nails being driven into Vestibulum's coffin.
"What are we to do, then?" Gloria asked.
"The world has changed, and we have not grown and changed with it, obviously." Duncan sighed. "We need to cease our infighting, for starters. Thankfully, the loss of our lycan forces will help put an end to that! We need to become more engaged in the world as it is, and not our little aspect of it. Breaking the silence, such as Gradatim broke it last week, and as the Ascendance broke it months ago in Reno, will no longer be tolerated.
"The government has seen that we are not the all powerful and mighty force we once were. They have seen that we're rather fractious and incapable of standing together. They have seen that we are weak, and if we don't set about fixing this now, it will not be long before the Treaty of York is torn up, and we find ourselves at the beck and call of the government or one of its many organizations."
"Well, if you hadn't taken away our lycans..." the head of Totis Viribus muttered.
"The chain of events that lead to those events, I daresay, started a good many decades ago. Possibly even centuries ago. We agreed to civilize the lycans in exchange for their protection. Well, civilize them we did, but abuse them we did as well, when we started to use them against each other, instead of how we had agreed to."
"Wait, we had an agreement? With who?" David, the leader of the Lux, asked.
"With the lions," Perkins spoke up. "The lion who has been leading all of this told us of it."
"You're taking his word?" Todd snarled sarcastically.
"Of course not," Perkins replied, "but with that knowledge, we now knew what to look for. Several days ago, we found it. It's an old agreement, made some four millennia ago."
"The point, which you either have already seen, or soon will," Duncan said, "is that we relied on the lycans for much of our power and protection, and now they're gone. If we do not want to find ourselves delivered back into the kinds of slavery we once feared, we need to start pulling together."
"Is it true you've allied with the lycans?" Marson asked. "That was what my people in Los Angeles told me had happened after the attack on your council was repelled."
Duncan nodded. "Yes, we have. We have also allied ourselves with the Council of Eruditio."
"What about Gradatim!" the Totis Viribus head yelled out.
"There is no more Gradatim," Duncan said.
"So that's it? Because they're your pets now, they get away with murder?"
Perkins spoke up again, "The Gradatim had taken up research into the summoning of demons. We have proof of this. A week ago, the Stuttgart treaty and its protocols were invoked. I daresay that if Valens hadn't destroyed the Gradatim, we would have had to do it ourselves."
"He's telling the truth," Todd said as Perkins' announcement was met with silence. "I saw the evidence, as did Marson."
"So, because of all of this," Duncan looked around the room, "the heads of the Council of Sapientia, after consultation with the heads of the Council of Eruditio, have decreed another change to our traditions."
"Two in one year, that's gotta be a record," the Goliard head joked.
"No council shall make war on another council ever again. Any and all disputes will either be mediated by a neutral party, or settled by individual, non-lethal duels."
"You can't be serious!" Todd said, the shocked expression on his face echoed on the faces of several others there.
"We are killing off the best and brightest of our own people!" Perkins said, standing up to look around at the others. "Our numbers haven't grown in over two hundred years! If we don't stop killing each other off, soon there will not be any of us left!"
"And without the power of the lycans to hide behind, it's more than just each other we have to worry about," Duncan said.
"What are you worried about? You still have yours!" Todd yelled.
"Because this isn't just about us, Todd! If you idiots on the Vestibulum had taken your responsibilities to lead all of us seriously, instead of only caring about yourselves, we wouldn't be in this position today! Your philosophy of stagnation weakened us, and you drove away the greatest ally we ever had!
"Don't you get it, man? Being the senior council and the leader of us all isn't about bragging rights and egos! It's about leading! We haven't been led for over two hundred years, now we're weaker than ever before, and in danger of being in serious trouble! All of our seers have been forecasting some sort of life-changing event on the horizon, and what have you done?"
"We were trying to get our lycans back!" Todd replied.
"You were trying to hold on to your power, rather than addressing the issue that will soon be confronting us. You engaged in fights with the Ascendance and with Sapientia! You never once stood up and tried to rally us to the bigger cause! You look solely to the past, and never to the future. To your own fortune, not the fortunes of us all! You had your chance, and you squandered it."
Duncan turned to the rest of the room. "The leaders of Sapientia call for a conclave of the Seers to take place in Paris. We need to examine this threat so we can move to protect ourselves from it."
"But the lycans are the threat!" Todd said.
"It's the seers' job to determine the threat, Todd," Marson said, shaking his head. "That's always been the way." Marson turned to look at Duncan. "The Ascendance's seers will be there."
"So will those of the Lux," David said.
"And the Sorceress Guild," Gloria said, as one by one everyone else at the table agreed.
"Fine," Todd grumbled, "the Vestibulum's seers will also attend."
Duncan bowed. "Thank you. Now we will proceed around the table in order to discuss whatever issues each of you may have. David?"
Sitting down, Duncan breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The order to call the North American seers to conclave had come down last night. The Vestibulum in Europe had been avoiding the issue for weeks now. Pierre believe that, by goading Todd into action, the Vestibulum head would cease his stonewalling.
Something was coming, both Sapientia's and Eruditio's seers were agreed on that.
Something was definitely coming.
End of Book #9
Afterword
Hello everyone. I'd like to thank you for having gotten to this point in the ongoing story of Sean and the battle into which he's found himself drawn. If you enjoyed this book, I'd appreciate it if you'd rate and review it on Amazon. Writers are rewarded by Amazon when we get four and five-star reviews, and the more we get, the more we're rewarded.
So please! I'd appreciate it very much if you gave me a good review.
If you find any typos or 'wrong words', please feel free to email what and where they were to me. Typos always make it through, no matter how many people I have checking things.
Character List: I'm starting to build one on my website for those interested:
http://www.vanstry.net/stryvant/Valens Cast of Characters.html
Book Ten: Book #10 hasn't started yet, hopefully by the time you read this is wi
ll be underway. I meant to publish this in June, but due to a lot of traveling during that month (buying a house in another state, and having the first sale fall through due to serious issues discovered in the house we were planning to buy, then starting all over again with another property) well, it got pushed back. At this point we're about halfway through the second arc. I did get to talk to one fan who I met at LibertyCon last week about the plans for the third arc and they were rather enthused. Course you won't see that until book #13 (my lucky number!).
Some Recommendations: As mentioned before, I do have another name I write under: John Van Stry. If you haven't looked at it, you might appreciate my 'Portals of Infinity' series. It's currently at eight books and will continue, but right now I'm focused on the Valens Legacy series, so I probably won't be revisiting the Portals series until sometime in the Fall.
Some other people I enjoy reading in this genre, and you might, as well:
William D. Arand
Blaise Corvin
Michael-Scott Earle
They're all good people and good writers. You may also want to check out this group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/haremlit/
Again, thank you for your support and for buying my books.
My Amazon Author's webpage:
https://www.amazon.com/Jan-Stryvant/e/B06ZY7L62L/
Occasional announcements at:
https://stryvant.blogspot.com/
Jan Stryvant website at:
http://www.vanstry.net/stryvant/
Email:
[email protected]