Competitions

by Sharon Green

  Homin slumped in his chair, wishing it were possible to close his eyes and hide in a world of soft, comforting black. If he tried to do as Delin suggested and demand that they leave right now, Delin would undoubtedly become so angry that he would refuse to accompany Homin after all. And as far as refusing to allow Elfini to do as she pleased… How was he supposed to refuse someone so much stronger? If he tried she would hurt him even more, so what option did he have other than to simply accept what she gave…?

  “Ah, thank you, my dear,” Delin said, and Homin looked up to see that the serving girl had brought Delin’s tea. The girl smiled at Delin and swung her hips as she waited to be paid, something she hadn’t done with Homin. She’d all but demanded the payment as well as a tip, showing the method worked well enough for her.

  But for Homin to use it, that was quite out of the question…

  “Four minutes to go, Homin old fellow,” Delin said once he’d paid the girl and had begun to stir sugar into his tea. And he hadn’t even noticed the way the girl had been flaunting herself at him. It must be wonderful to be as handsome and self-assured as Delin, but Homin found it completely impossible to picture himself living such a life. Even if he thought it might be possible, he’d have no idea how to begin.

  So he just sat there and watched Delin drink tea while he felt his insides tightening more and more. By the big clock on the far wall behind Delin eleven minutes passed, and then Delin lifted his cup and gestured with it.

  “Four minutes exactly, and I’m down to the last swallow,” he announced, then finished the tea with a satisfied “Ah! Now a quick trip to the comfort facilities, and we’re on our way.”

  Homin couldn’t bear the idea of waiting again, so he went with Delin and also used the facilities. This time Delin was through first, and when Homin emerged from the privacy room Delin shook a finger at him with a grin.

  “Time is passing, old fellow, and you’re the one causing the delay,” he said in a mock-serious tone. “But I’ve sent the boy for our carriages, so the time shouldn’t be entirely wasted. Come along now, and we’ll complete this mission of mercy.”

  Homin followed Delin outside, and the carriages really were pulling up to be boarded. Delin told him to ride in his own carriage and lead the way, as he had no really clear idea where Homin lived. Homin realized that that was true so he agreed immediately, although he would have felt much better if Delin were right there beside him. It was always possible that for some unknown reason Delin would desert him at the last moment, and he would have to face Elfini alone.

  But Delin didn’t desert him, even though Homin’s stomach was in knots by the time he reached home. Delin’s carriage followed up the drive directly behind his own, and a moment later they were both climbing out in front of the house.

  “I love these older houses,” Delin commented as Homin hurried up to him, his examination of the house slow and leisurely. “Father would never live in something that hadn’t been built to his own specifications, but I prefer smaller places like this. They’re so much cozier… Shall we go in?”

  “Of course,” Homin said quickly, biting his tongue before he pointed out that it was Delin who had been simply standing there, not him. Delin’s request had suggested the opposite, but it wasn’t something to argue about now. Elfini was waiting, and every extra minute added to her wait would mean more pain for Homin.

  A servant opened the door as they reached it, and once Homin had stepped into the entrance hall he was reminded that Lady Elfini awaited him in her private sanctum. Homin nodded spasmodically even as he swallowed hard, but Delin didn’t look at all disturbed. He ambled along behind Homin without a care in the world, but that was because he’d soon be leaving again. Homin had nowhere else to go, and the knowledge terrified him.

  The door to Elfini’s sanctum stood closed as usual, but he knocked as he was supposed to, waited the required half minute, then turned the knob and entered. Delin had caught up to him by then, and entered right behind him.

  “You’ll regret having made me wait, Homin,” Elfini said in the coldest tones he’d ever heard, her eyes filled with that malicious glitter that frightened him so much. “And were you given permission to bring home one of your little friends with you?”

  “Elfini, I’d like to present Lord Delin Moord,” Homin began with a quaver, but when he turned toward Delin the rest of the words died in his throat. Delin stood staring at Elfini with his mouth open, his skin as pale as milk and his eyes filled with shock. Not only was all the charm Homin had been counting on gone, but Delin looked as though he might faint!

  * * *

  Delin knew that Homin was saying something to him, but nothing came through the ringing in his ears that echoed and reechoed in his head. She was alive, the woman was alive, but that was impossible! He’d killed her and looked at her dead body, so she couldn’t possibly be alive!

  His right hand groped until it found the doorjamb, and only just in time to keep his knees from buckling and sending him down to the floor. This was a nightmare and it couldn’t be happening, not when it was so important, not again…

  Again. That word brought a clutch of illness to Delin’s middle, as he’d been certain he’d outgrown the condition. As a child he’d fantasized all the time, and some of the fantasies had seemed absolutely real. He’d go about his business thinking he’d done something, and then it would turn out that he hadn’t done it after all. On those occasions where his dereliction had come to his father’s attention, Delin had been sternly punished for failing to obey and then lying about it. But he hadn’t failed to obey and hadn’t lied, at least not knowingly…

  And now it looked as though the condition had returned, at the worst time it possibly could. This matter of the competitions would be his one and only chance to make his mark, and if he failed he would be trapped in obscurity forever. Forever in Father’s house, a concept too horrible to contemplate without shuddering.

  “Delin, are you all right?” Homin asked anxiously, hovering only a step away as though ready to catch him if he fell. “Do you need to sit down? Perhaps a cup of tea would help…”

  “Have the servants put him in his carriage and send him home,” the woman said impatiently, cutting into Homin’s expressions of concern. “I’ve had to wait too long already, and refuse to wait any longer. Unless you’ve brought him here to share what I have for you, and then you may drag him inside instead.”

  The amusement in the slut’s voice was intolerable, and it actually helped Delin to pull himself together. He straightened away from the doorjamb as his blood began to flow properly through his veins again, and he looked directly at Elfini.

  “Homin, have one of the servants pack you some clothing,” he ordered without taking his eyes from the slut. “If you stay here you’ll be useless to the group, so I’m taking you home with me.”

  “How dare you try to interfere with my household?” the female demanded coldly, but too late to stop Homin’s scurrying away. “When he returns you’ll tell him you’ve changed your mind, and then you’ll leave. If you don’t, my husband will have a private talk with your father.”

  “What good do you expect that to do?” Delin countered with a snort of ridicule, absolutely certain about his position in a circumstance like that. “All I’d have to do is tell Father that your husband spends his leisure getting his bottom spanked by his wife, and Father won’t even let him in the house. Not to mention that he’ll probably decide to ruin your husband’s career. Father loathes this sort of perversion even more than I do.”

  “Get out,” the female snarled, her left hand curled into a claw. “Take the sniveling little coward with you if you must, but get out of my house!”

  “At your pleasure, Dama,” Delin said with a sarcastic bow, then he turned and walked completely out of the room. The slut stormed after him to slam the door closed, but her frustrated anger wasn’t nearly as pleasing as it should have been. Once again he’d had to use the threat of getting his father involv
ed in order to make things go the way they were supposed to, and his hatred for having to do that grew greater each time he did.

  But until he made his mark nothing would change, so he’d have to do anything and everything to protect his group. And in the real world, not in some delusion that his mind dreamed up for him. And yet how odd it was, that the chamber looked exactly as it had in the illusion, all the way down to the specialized devices on the wall with the whips. How that could be he had no idea, unless he’d actually come to the house, looked in through the window, and then fantasized the rest. But that would make him a crippled coward who couldn’t even admit his failures to himself, so it couldn’t possibly be true.

  Delin paced up and down the hall, his thoughts black and ugly and hating, until Homin finally reappeared. The fat fool was being followed by a servant carrying a small trunk, which explained what had taken so long. Without saying anything Delin turned and stalked off toward the front door, letting Homin and the servant catch up as best they might. And he would insist that Homin use his own carriage, to keep the jittering fool away from him as much as possible.

  As he sat in his carriage waiting for Homin to get his trunk stowed and his overweight body settled, Delin made two decisions. The first was to tell Father immediately what Homin’s situation with Elfini was, which would certainly set in motion Homin’s father’s ruination. The man was powerful, but not nearly as powerful as Father, and if he were engrossed with imminent ruination he couldn’t obey Elfini and make trouble for the group.

  That idea made Delin feel a good deal better, and helped to convince him that his second decision was just as necessary as the first. Tonight, after retiring to his apartment, he would sneak out and return to kill Elfini, this time in reality rather than illusion. He had to do it now, there was nothing else possible, not when making his mark was at stake. Nothing could stand in the way of that, nor would it be allowed to. His group meant his future, and he would defend it with everything he had. It was time to really act, it was time…

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Good morning, Lord Bron,” Deever said as he was shown in, his sharp gaze flickering everywhere. “All ready to begin the day’s practice?”

  “Since these practice sessions last only a few hours, why can’t they be done in the afternoon?” Bron demanded as usual, finding that his body had no interest in rising from the couch he sprawled on. It was much too early for anyone really civilized to be up and about, but his instructor had no more compassion for him than he’d ever had.

  “You’re hardly the only group member I instruct in a day,” Deever returned, also as usual, acting like high nobility rather than the only-just-barely-acceptable lower born that he was. “Since someone has to be first, you’ve been chosen to be that someone. Shall we begin?”

  Bron muttered under his breath as he made the supreme effort of struggling to his feet, but then he noticed the clock. Deever was always right on time, but this morning he seemed to have missed.

  “Well, Deever, it seems there are times when even you oversleep,” Bron gloated as he pointed to the clock. “Less than half an hour, but late is late.”

  “It wasn’t sleep that kept me, it was the news,” Deever said, raising supercilious brows. “You can’t mean you haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?” Bron demanded, annoyance quickly returning. “If there’s news, you should have said so immediately.”

  “It’s difficult to understand how anyone could have missed hearing,” Deever replied, still looking around the sitting room rather than at Bron. “Lady Elfini Weil was murdered last night, and they suspect one of the household staff—or a common tramp—to have done it.”

  Bron knew his jaw had dropped, but that news was too incredible to react any other way. Lord Aston Weil was powerful, and if anyone’s family should have been safe, it was his. Anger came as Bron realized his own household staff must already know all about it, but no one had bothered to tell him.

  “How could anyone who valued his own life have killed her?” Bron asked, determined to get the details now. “And how can they suspect ‘one of the staff or a tramp’ in general? Doesn’t knowing which aspect was used narrow it down a little?”

  “That seems to be the major problem, and is one of the things making everyone discuss the situation,” Deever said, finally bringing his gaze to Bron. “She wasn’t murdered by the use of one of the aspects, she was hacked to pieces with some bladed weapon. It was incredibly gory, I hear, and so bad that some people actually threw up at seeing the body.”

  “Just as I probably would,” Bron muttered after feeling his face pale. “I’ve never even heard of anyone being killed like that… It must have been done by some talentless freak, but … How do you hack someone to pieces and keep it quiet? Surely the woman screamed at least a little before she died, so why didn’t someone—like Lord Aston, for instance—hurry in to help her?”

  “That’s another odd aspect of the matter,” Deever said, and now he studied a point beyond Bron’s right shoulder. “There’s no official word on that part of it, but rumor has it that Lord Aston was hanging unconscious in a wooden whipping frame while she was being murdered. It isn’t something to mention everywhere just in case it turns out to be untrue, but there have been … interesting rumors about Lord Aston before. This one matches those others perfectly.”

  “What a mess!” Bron said with a headshake, then another thought occurred to him. “But what does Homin say? I nearly forgot that that’s his family, and he’s a member of my group. He should know what happened, because he was right there.”

  “It seems Lord Homin wasn’t there,” Deever informed him, now looking openly satisfied. “The Advisors were concerned because he is one of your group, but it so happens he left the house yesterday afternoon for an extended stay with Lord Delin Moord. No one yet knows why that was done, but the fact of the matter cannot be denied.”

  “That’s too bad,” Bron said with a fatalistic shrug. “For a moment I was able to hope that he would turn out to be the murderer, and then he would have to be replaced in the group. He’s the worst among us, and if he doesn’t improve we’ll—all look like fools in the competitions.”

  Bron stumbled just a little over the end of his speech, remembering only at the last instant that he wasn’t to say anything about winning. No one was meant to know they intended to try, and happily Deever didn’t seem to have noticed the near slip.

  “Your training results could bear some improvement as well, Lord Bron,” Deever said, safe behind the authority given him by the Advisors. “Shall we visit the training cubicle now? I must be off to my next student as close to on time as possible.”

  Bron would have enjoyed giving the dolt a piece of his mind, but Deever was backed by too many influential people. And as understanding as his father had been all Bron’s life, the one thing that would turn him to thoughts of severity and unreason was Bron’s trying the patience of the Advisors. His father’s own position would be put at risk then, so the old man refused to even entertain the idea. Or continue to support Bron if he entertained it.

  So Bron had no choice but to clamp his jaw closed and lead the way out of the sitting room toward the back garden, where the practice cubicle had been installed. The idiotic old man who was his father would be sorry when Bron’s group was Seated as the reigning Blending, but by then it would be too late. Bron would remember how he’d been treated, and would repay exactly as he’d gotten.

  The cubicle, which had been placed to the far left side of the garden and away from the house, was made of clear resin. It was also much too small to accommodate the presence of a decent chair, and a small shed installed beside it contained all sorts of paraphernalia that was meant to be used inside the cubicle. Right now there was only a box fitted out with a foot pedal, a fixture Bron had grown so tired of that he was delightedly relieved it had become time to advance.

  “Please remember what’s necessary here, Lord Bron,” Deever began to lecture as the
y reached the cubicle. “The patterns you’ve been taught to weave since childhood are what’s necessary, so let’s try not to forget again to use them.”

  Once again Bron had to grit his teeth, this time because Deever was such a fool. All children of their class were taught to weave with their talent as soon as they became capable of doing it, and it was unreasonable to expect an adult to constantly remember a child’s game. So he’d forgotten to weave his fires once or twice; there was no need to make him seem so feebleminded that he’d always forget.

  But it was now time to get rid of this device for good and all, so Bron stomped down on the pedal. The lid of the box flew open and a cloud of soil was thrown into the air, a cloud that didn’t stay aloft long. But Bron was ready, so he reached out with his woven fires and burned all that soil the way he wanted to burn Deever and his superior Lord Rigos. It felt marvelous, magnificent, and then it was all done.

  “Well, how gratifying,” Deever said, his brows high with surprise. “You’ve actually burned nearly every grain of soil. A few small grains escaped you, but they’re nothing to be concerned about. Congratulations, Lord Bron, on achieving your first mastery.”

  “And tomorrow I intend to achieve the second,” Bron said loftily, chest swelling with well-earned pride. “I’m tired of being called lazy and incompetent, so I’m going to show all of you.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that, Lord Bron, so let’s get to practicing the next exercise as soon as the servants set up the equipment. We haven’t much time, you know, so we dare not waste any.”

  “You talk as if the competitions are to begin after this week’s end,” Bron scoffed, annoyed that he wasn’t yet to be allowed to return to bed. “There’s a lot more time than that, so why must we engage in this ridiculous rush?”