It wasn’t quite what Sala wanted. While Dillon wouldn’t let Moreena out of his sight, and therefore wasn’t guarding the queen anymore, Heyou had taken over. Sala had hoped Dillon would be gone without a paranoid Heyou in his place. She’d have to do something about that.
Sala sat on a chair in the corner of her bedroom, watching two creatures writhe together on the bed. Neither of them looked entirely human, or anything like their normal forms, but that didn’t matter to her. She liked sex and liked to watch sex, and she especially liked having the power to order these two battle sylphs to have sex with each other.
Wat was one. He was still hers, Gabralina never having rescinded that foolish order to obey her. The stupid girl had probably even forgotten. She’d undoubtedly meant for the loan to be temporary, but that didn’t matter to Sala. Wat was hers now as surely as Claw, and in some ways he was even more useful. He was dim enough that he’d forget everything she directed, and now, with his banishment from the battler ranks, he had no schedule to keep. He was always free for her use.
Sala leaned back in her chair, licking her lips as she watched the entwined battlers. Wat lay on his back against the bed, that eternally confused look on his face as though he didn’t understand what was happening to him. He probably didn’t. He never did. He’d sabotaged the shelving at the warehouse perfectly, though, drawing Claw and Luck away so that Rachel could be poisoned successfully. Wat had then freed the Eferem assassins and carried them out of the Valley, where he’d killed them and buried the bodies, with the story she’d given him turning the council’s attention toward Eferem.
Not that there would be a council much longer. Wat and Claw had worked together to kill Galway, and they’d sabotaged Moreena’s well to distract her horribly protective battle sylph from the queen.
Sala’s gut twisted, though her expression didn’t change and she still enjoyed the show. The Valley’s battlers were beginning to believe someone was intentionally killing their masters. If they managed to convince their humans they were right . . . She needed to give the battlers someone to blame so that they’d calm down and stop watching everything so closely.
Wat whimpered on the bed, Claw speeding up. Neither of them would do this without orders, which only made it more interesting. Of the two, Sala preferred Wat. She couldn’t feel him. While she needed Claw, his grief and barely controlled hysteria were alien to her. They were almost disturbing. She hadn’t expected that.
It didn’t matter. Not so long as he did as told. Which he would. He knew she’d killed his last master, and he remembered everything she ordered him to do, and he was aware of much more that was coming. Not all of it, of course, and not yet the one thing she truly needed him for, but enough. Enough to eventually drive him completely mad so that he would do everything she commanded, even the thing she’d learned no sane sylph would do. That was part of why she had him and Wat together like this now. The other part was how good it made her feel.
Sala licked her lips again and slid a hand down her skirts to touch herself. Her power over the two battlers, her absolute power, was intoxicating. She smiled as she watched, part of her mind still devising plans within plans and reassessing targets.
She’d failed to kill Moreena, but she had succeeded in getting Dillon away from Solie. Once she arranged for a patsy to take the blame for everything that happened so far, she’d start again, winnowing away Solie’s support until she was left unprotected. Then Sala would take her place.
Take away the queen’s support. Sala shuddered delicately, pleasure swelling through her. Lizzy aside, there was only one human member of the council left. But Sala couldn’t move too quickly and risk underestimating him. Not Leon.
Claw lay entwined with Wat, their bodies joined on the bed even as their minds recoiled from each other. Back in the world they came from, there were many battlers who found happiness with each other, but those weren’t the battlers who risked the gate. And, both Wat and Claw had masters. Wat was unhappy here, wanting Gabralina and uselessly reaching for her despite Sala’s orders. Claw was unhappy, too, but there was no point in seeking reassurance from Sala.
He’d known what a mistake he’d made the moment he bonded to her, how she’d set him up to choose her when his dearest Rachel died. Sala had killed her. He knew that absolutely, knew it down to his core, but there was nothing he could do about it. The calm placidity of Sala’s surface mind was just a mask, light sparkling on the surface of deep water that hid black mud below. Underneath was nothing, just a gaping eternity of emptiness with no love, fear, anger, or soul. Claw was trapped there, screaming inside worse than he ever had with Boradel.
He pushed himself against Wat with fake lust generated only to satisfy Sala’s perverse needs and felt eternal madness push against him. It promised peace. No more need to think, no more need to feel; he could just gibber and laugh inside his own head, not caring what was done with him anymore. But he wasn’t quite there.
Why not? He’d been ordered to kill Galway in the shape of a bear, knowing how it would tear one of his hive brothers apart. He’d wrecked the integrity of Moreena’s well so that she’d fall in and be killed, thereby crippling Dillon’s ability to be an effective guard. Sala was playing with him, hoping he would go insane. She had chosen him for his damaged spirit, needing him crazy enough that he’d do whatever she wanted. He knew that and had to obey her anyway. He had no choice.
He wanted to lose his mind, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw Rachel sitting in her chair by the window and knitting by the light of an oil lantern, or standing in front of her class, speaking about math, or reading the tiny history of their Valley. Even now when he closed them, he saw her beneath him, lying nude and beautiful, her soft gray hair spread out over the pillow, her lips pursed and spots of color high on her cheeks.
Claw groaned, his head bowed nearly to the pillow. He moved faster, his hands clutching his lover’s. Rachel smiled back at him, rocking gently and whispering.
“You’re such a good soul, Claw,” she said in his memory. “Such a gentle heart. Don’t doubt yourself, my sweet. Not ever. I love you.”
Claw thrust harder, rocking the bed and slamming it against the wall. He wanted this done. In the back of his mind, he felt Sala’s sudden climax.
“I will always love you,” Rachel whispered.
Claw cried out, stiffening, and he collapsed, lying against the warm body below him. It wasn’t Rachel. His lovely Rachel.
Wat made a confused, questioning sound, and Claw pressed their cheeks together.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the other battle sylph’s ear, low enough that Sala wouldn’t hear. Wat just whimpered again and put his arm around Claw’s neck. The two held each other, seeking comfort for the brief moments they were allowed.
For four years Thul Cramdon had been leading a supply caravan from Eferem to Yed, then back through Eferem to Sylph Valley and then on to Para Dubh. He’d been one of the first to add Sylph Valley to his route, and as a result, he’d always enjoyed a degree of preferential treatment. He’d only had problems once, when one of his drovers got himself killed by battle sylphs for groping a girl. Thul had been careful to make sure nothing similar happened again. Not with his employees.
“I’ve always been agreeable to your rules!” he shouted now. “You have no right to do this to me!”
The man he shouted at, the chancellor of the Valley, regarded him impassively from across the desk. He wasn’t the usual person Thul dealt with, but Thul had heard Galway died. The blonde girl on one side of him seemed a little less sure of herself, but the battle sylph on the other looked prone to violence. So, Thul took a deep breath and calmed. He wouldn’t help his case by getting smeared across the wall behind him.
“It’s not fair,” he said instead. “I’ve invested thousands in coming here. I can’t afford to lose that money.”
“You won’t,” the chancellor told him, his hands clasped before him on the desk. “We’re not turning down your trade. We�
��re just setting limits on where your men are allowed to go while you’re here.”
“You’re restricting me to the main road and a three-block area near the edge of town.”
“Yes,” the chancellor said. His eyes were flat. “Eferem has already sent both spies and assassins here. You’re from Eferem. We don’t want anyone thinking you might be a threat.”
Thul hid a shudder, glancing quickly at the bored, blond battler. He didn’t seem like much, but Thul knew the sylph could kill him and all of his men in seconds. The battle sylphs were the only part of the Valley he didn’t like. They were usually everywhere.
The girl leaned forward. “We do want your trade,” she assured him. “Never doubt that.”
Thul wasn’t terribly inclined to listen to a girl, but the battler looked less bored when she spoke and watched him warningly.
The girl continued. “But we do have to protect ourselves. It’s for your protection as well. A wall is going up now to mark the areas to which your men will be granted access. We’re making sure that all of the amenities you need will be available. But, you’ll need to stay inside the trade area. Otherwise, well . . .” She glanced to her left. “The battle sylphs will react defensively.”
The thought of that made Thul shudder. He’d seen what was left of his drover after the battlers were done with him. Still, he was too unhappy with the situation to keep his mouth shut. “I’m no spy. I may be from Eferem, but I work for myself. Half my drovers sign up because they want to see this place. What am I supposed to tell them? They can come to a three-block area and if they go outside it, battlers will kill them? No one will sign up with that hanging over their heads!”
“We don’t doubt that,” the girl said. “Most of you traders are good men, but there have been deaths. And we’re applying this to everyone, not just you. We’re restricting the movements of everyone who isn’t from the Valley. To acknowledge the difficulty this is causing . . . we’re also willing to pay up to five percent more on previously negotiated goods.”
Thul was silent a moment, considering. Given the size of his cargo, this was a significant amount of money—and he caught that he’d only see the extra five percent if he cooperated. He grimaced, reminding himself that money was money and finally nodded in agreement.
As the caravan merchant left, Leon looked down at his daughter. “What did you think?” he asked.
She eyed him uncertainly. “Can we afford to pay all this extra money?”
“We can’t afford not to. By restricting traders to one area we’re basically treating them like enemies. If we don’t want them to start choosing other trade routes, we have to make it worth their while to put up with us.”
Lizzy sighed, not really happy at the thought of walling off anyone who might be a spy or assassin. Short of starting a war with Eferem, which could result in wars with every kingdom this side of the ocean, they had no other choice. Earth sylphs were already raising a wall around the perimeter of the town. She could see it from her bedroom window.
Ril regarded them both unapologetically, just as he was unapologetic about following them everywhere they went and restricting them to pretty much staying either in the house or in their offices, where he watched the doors.
At least it was giving him time to train his daughter, Leon thought. And she was turning out to be a quick study. She definitely didn’t mind Ril’s continuing presence, though Leon could see that the sylphs’ growing protectiveness was becoming a problem for many masters in the Valley. Already some were complaining, but Leon hadn’t joined in. Ril had been his slave for decades, not allowed to speak or even choose his own shape; Leon figured he could deal with a little overprotectiveness.
Besides, he wasn’t sure that Ril was being too cautious. Two battle sylph masters were dead and one had come uncomfortably close. Leon wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. He wasn’t sure what the connection between the three was—Rachel, Galway, and Moreena—and he wasn’t entirely sure Rachel’s death was due to anything other than old age. But he’d learned all about mistaken assumptions right around the first time he heard Ril speak.
So, they still had five assassins who’d escaped the Valley, thanks to someone who could hide himself from battlers. Leon was convinced it was Umut Taggart. He had given everyone a description, and Ril, who had seen Umut before, took the man’s shape to show them. Umut wasn’t walking into the Valley ever again, even without the walls. But, that had been the easy part. No one had been able to determine how the shelves in the warehouse collapsed, and Leon couldn’t think of any way for Umut to have done it except with the help of his battler, Black, who would have given himself away with his hate aura.
Unless Umut had a better partnership with his battler than Leon could imagine and Black dropped his hate. That was a frightening thought. Mace’s prideful refusal to believe aside, battle sylphs could indeed slip by one another. Ril had told Leon about exiled battlers in the hive world who survived because they tricked battlers like Mace into not realizing they were there.
Still, it had to have been Umut. Alcor’s other men just didn’t have the subtleness to pull this off, while Umut had been working on discretion his entire life. Unfortunately, they had no clues. Rachel and Moreena might have been nothing more than an attempt to draw attention away, or a genuine coincidence. But Galway was a definite coup, and something Umut surely would have tried for.
He’d have to talk to Mace, Leon decided. Yes, Lizzy was helping and Ril was a pretty good secretary, but essentially he, Mace, and Solie were running everything, and Solie was progressing in her pregnancy. The Widow wouldn’t like it, but she would have to help. They needed her mind to help keep the Valley together. There were any number of people here who could take care of her orphans, and Mace would certainly be happier with her near. Right now, he was almost the only battler still guarding the Valley as a whole, the only one relying on others to protect his mate.
It was laundry day at the Blackwell home, the fire in the kitchen built up to a conflagration. Several children were heating and hauling water outside by the bucket load, pouring it into a huge tub where the Widow wielded soap and scrubbed their clothing on a segmented board. She worked methodically, ignoring the ache in her back. Other children took the clean laundry and wrung out the water before carrying it over to the lines where Gabralina pinned it up.
Sitting cross-legged on the back porch and being pretty much useless, Wat stared mindlessly at the bees that circled nearby bushes in hope of finding late-fall flowers. Lily glanced toward him, then away. He was there to watch Gabralina, but he was watching her as well.
Wat. As her protector. Mace was furious about it, yet there wasn’t much he could do if he was going to fulfil his duties. He didn’t need any added stress, so she hadn’t told him of the times Wat wandered off. He was just too unreliable to guard anyone, but Lily needed no guard anyway.
Wat was around today, staring at nothing even more stupidly than usual. Lily eyed him again, then turned back to her washing. The battler wasn’t her problem.
Gabralina was hanging the last of the laundry, and she stepped back to admire it. The girl who’d been holding pins for her grinned.
“It all looks so clean, doesn’t it?”
Gabralina smiled in agreement. “It does. It doesn’t dry as fast here as it did back home when I was a girl. I did so much laundry.”
“You did?” The girl seemed surprised.
Gabralina laughed. “It seemed I did nothing but. I was terribly poor before I met my friend Sala.”
Sala. Her friend had brought pretty dresses and parties, and eventually even the introduction to the magistrate. She hadn’t had to wash clothes at all. Still, it actually felt good to be doing that sort of thing again, a bit of physical labor, just as it felt good to take care of the children. Being part of something again was wonderful.
While she waited for the next batch to be scrubbed, Gabralina went over to her battler. He was staring off into space, his head tilted to one
side and his mouth open, his face blank. She grinned at the sight. He looked so cute.
“Hiya,” she said.
Wat blinked slowly, then turned his head, his mouth still hanging open. He blinked again, then grinned, his face coming alive as he saw her. “Hello!”
Gabralina sniggered. Sitting down, she leaned against him until he put an arm around her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Thinking?”
“You looked so thoughtful.”
“Oh.” He shrugged his shoulders so high that his entire body moved, and she giggled again as she was nearly knocked off the porch. “Nothing.”
“Aw.” She put her head on his shoulder. “You want to help me with the laundry?”
He eyed her dubiously. “Is that like chores? I saw soap. Heyou told me soap meant chores. He said chores are evil.”
Gabralina howled with laughter. “Did he say that?”
“Yeah. Evil is bad.” He looked down at her. “Is Sala evil?”
Gabralina froze. “Sala? No! Why do you say that?”
“I dunno. She scares me.”
“Why?” Gabralina whispered, suddenly afraid. Sala was her friend. She owed Sala everything, and the girl had never asked for anything in return.
“I don’t remember.” Wat tilted his head back to one side, mouth open again. “I forget.”
“Oh.” Gabralina didn’t know what to think.
The Widow called her name, interrupting her thoughts. “Gabralina! These sheets are ready for you.”
“Right! Be right there!” The blonde girl jumped up and took a step away before turning back and kissing Wat on the cheek. He immediately grabbed for her, but she danced away, laughing, and went off to hang the newly washed sheets.
Chapter Fifteen
Thanks to the new wall and construction around the trade warehouses, the main market had moved, and the road was crowded with merchants selling their wares. Humming happily under her breath, Lizzy strode along it, stopping at a stall to look at some rolls of fabric. In her basket she already had an array of tomatoes and apples, as well as a chicken with the feathers still on.
Queen of the Sylphs Page 16