Isolde and Elan were the only ones in the room except for Ace who didn’t look like they had taken a bad beating. Isolde’s green eyes were glittering and she grinned at Boomer.
“So, you no longer think I’m a demon?”
“A demon would use what you can do for evil and you haven’t so far.”
Sartika cleared her throat. “This is very touching, but the new moon is coming up and Isolde needs to rest before we do anything with these nine men.”
“I can’t rest,” Isolde pointed out. “We were outnumbered with these nine. If there are more names inside their heads, I need to get them now so we aren’t surprised. We knew what we were dealing with this time and they played into our hands. It’s not going to be this easy again if they have the jump on us.”
“How is anyone going to fight again if you get more names? What if you don’t bounce back as quickly because you’re questioning so many?”
“No one in this room will fight again. No one knows about the nine in this room. Ace can get on COMM and say they were part of the plot to assassinate Elan. Have them arrested through standard channels while the rest of us recover.”
Sartika looked like she was about to argue, but Ace knew better. The men in this room couldn’t fight again and as good as Elan and Isolde were, there were only so many they could take on at once, even if Elan took away their guns.
“Isolde is right,” Ace pointed out. “We need to do it this way. It’s the best way. The safest way.”
“Isolde is usually right,” Elan said, kissing her cheek.
“Out of all these men, who would be the ringleader under Hog? I’ll start with him,” Isolde said.
She looked like she was going to do this if Elan had to carry her out the room.
Chapter 27
Stretch wasn’t the only one who wanted Isolde to teach them to fight. Galih had fifteen eighteen-year-olds who watched a projection of her dispatch four men with deadly grace and were begging him to get her into the forest to teach them. Galih decided it was best to turn the COMM projection off after Isolde said she intended to get into the thoughts of all nine of those men. He needed to hear what she found out, but he set his COMM to record it and he could watch it later.
All fifteen of them argued when he told them he wanted them at the ship with Hikmat and Koswara. They knew the bond was completed without Galih having to say a word. As soon as it started snowing, they just reached out to their bond animals and they were told it was part of the process. Galih felt like an idiot for standing out there pounding on Elan’s door while the two of them were apparently having a marathon sex session when he could have just gone and asked one of the other sixteen.
Galih would never admit this to anyone, but he was petrified Fjola had fooled them this entire time and Isolde was destroying Cendis. He thought she had manipulated Elan to her side when the moon burst into flames. Botak was the one that finally calmed him down, but Botak always had a calming effect on him when he was angry. Galih wondered how both he and Botak had read Isolde so wrongly that they nearly ruined this.
He was trying to wrangle all fifteen of them back down the hatch to the cells to see if Koswara and Hikmat had stirred again. Whatever Isolde and Dasimah had done to Hikmat, it took him a while to wake up again. He was confused and disoriented. Galih was starting to wonder if they had done permanent damage before Hikmat started speaking and trying to order them around. Galih didn’t like the man before just based on his thoughts, but now that he had to listen to him, he really just wanted to punch his face to a pulp.
He had the same whiny, nasally voice as when Dasimah was in his body, but it was worse when he was trying to use it to order them about. He could clearly see Koswara was slumped in the same type of cell he was, but he started yelling and ordering him to kill everyone there and free him. Koswara must have blamed him for the walls in his mind and getting him into this mess. He muttered a few Cendian curses at Hikmat then told him to get himself out this mess.
There wasn’t much they could get out of Koswara’s head since he didn’t know much, so the ones with defensive skills used him for practice. He tried to keep his screams in, but eventually, it would become too much and he couldn’t help it. Galih was starting to wonder if he was twisting these fifteen children into something ugly when they wouldn’t stop no matter how loud Koswara screamed. They didn’t stop until Koswara fainted or Galih made them.
Diah felt him when he started to doubt. She put her small hand on his shoulder. “He wouldn’t stop either. If he had tried to kill Isolde, he would have dragged it out to make it as painful as possible. I think you know some of what he would have tried to do to her since she’s a woman. All that pain we are giving him? He thinks he can use it to remember to kill. All I can feel from him is rage and the need for revenge.”
After that, Galih didn’t feel so bad about listening to Koswara scream. Especially when he would try to taunt them when he would see Dasimah faint and tell them he would kill her first. Galih was worried and there were countless ways to kill someone. Koswara could just get creative. When he gave that warning, Oleh just laughed and informed Galih he put up barriers against any type of harm. Koswara apparently couldn’t even remember how to swat a bug that was bothering him, even though he would know he wanted to.
Now that they had seen Elan’s announcement, felt the bond complete, and seen Isolde fight like a dancer, he couldn’t seem to quiet them down to focus. Parta kept talking about how he and Isolde were more similar than he thought if she could help the other soldiers like that. Jaka was apparently getting stronger visions about his Avalian bride. Normally, they just ignored Jaka when he was waxing poetic about the girl he’d never met, but now the room exploded with everyone sensing something cold far away.
After watching Isolde save Elan’s life, they all wanted to talk about how they all might have someone on Avala like them and they would have a relationship like Elan and Isolde. Even Nia appeared to have forgotten her crush on Elan and was thinking about some mysterious Avalian man. Galih couldn’t rein them in or get them to pay attention. Koswara was just scowling, but Hikmat was listening with interest. There were no windows down here, but Galih left him to rot in the dark. He was wearing thin robes like he was a temple priest when they snagged him. He would have felt the colder way out here greater than the rest of the Cendians did.
“Enough!” Galih yelled. “If you’re wondering if you have a bond mate, ask your Pawswearsea in your head and if you like the answer, for Fia’s sake, don’t reveal it in front of the enemy!”
The room finally quieted down as they all spoke in their heads. That was when Hikmat chose to speak. “What’s your end game? You seem to know about The Children of Fia. Surely, you’re not foolish enough to think they won’t come for me. We outnumber you and we’ve gotten to your military.”
Hikmat must not have remembered a thing from when Isolde was rooting around in his head since he was unconscious. He was also out when Dasimah was in his body. Did Hikmat really think they hadn’t done anything to him after watching what they had done to Koswara? His arrogance grated on Galih and he wanted to unlock that cell and beat Hikmat’s face in. He knew perfectly well why he couldn’t mark Hikmat, so he stepped away from the keypad to ease the temptation.
Galih moved away from the keypad and leaned into the glass. “You’ve only been gone a few days. You disappear for weeks with your assassin on converting missions you don’t let anyone question you about. You really made it too easy for us to keep you here. You know it’s going to be a while before anyone worries about you. No one is going to worry unless you aren’t at The Temple of Abra on the new moon.”
Hikmat didn’t look afraid at all. His beady eyes shot over at Koswara. “After everything I did for you, you betray me. You’ll pay for this!”
“Why don’t you use those mind tricks on him, eh? Shut him up. I tire of listening to him,” Koswara growled.
“Your assassin didn’t betray you. You betrayed yourself.
You know the sixteen have gifts. You’re looking at fifteen of them. The Avalian princess you wanted Koswara to try to kill just laid a hand on you and saw all your private thoughts. We know how many unarmed people will be at the temple and we know you lock them in. We know about your secret exit in the back. We know about the men in the military. It’s not as many as you’d hoped. Koswara would have tried to kill Isolde. She took out four of your military recruits herself.”
“Now, I know you’re lying. Women aren’t meant for fighting. They aren’t good at it. They are meant for bedding and making babies. If my men in the military had her in their sight, they would all take a turn with her then brought her to me. They—”
Hikmat immediately stopped speaking. His hands clamped over his ears and he started screaming. He fell to the ground and his body was jerking like he was having some sort of fit. Galih knew that meant Karta was trying to scramble his brain with that frequency and Atikah was giving him a few rounds of mental torture. Galih had to yell to both of them to remind them they needed him conscious. They finally let him go and he stayed on his back panting. He pulled a bloodied finger away from his ear and looked at the blood.
“Atikah and I could both beat you with our fists too,” Karta growled.
“You’re all a bunch of cursed demons. You’re just here to test me.”
“Oh, no, Hikmat,” Atikah purred. “I think you’ll find we are all quite blessed and things have been set in motion while you’ve been away.”
“If you know how many followers I have, then you know you can’t kill me. You can’t force me to go out in front of my people and lie. As soon as I have one ear, I’ll set my plan in motion. You may have disrupted a few of my pieces, but I’ve been planning this for decades.”
Galih pressed his hands against the glass. “Hikmat? So have we. The people are rallied behind Elan now. They outnumber your Children. We have a plan to put you in front of them and you’ll say exactly what we want you to say.”
“I won’t. You can’t force me. You can torture me again and I won’t break. I’ve worked too hard for this.”
“Gareng and Oleh? Get in his head and do your thing. We want him up there giving his usual rhetoric with no memories of this place.”
Both of them admitted it was probably going to have the same effect on them it did on Dasimah and Isolde. They would need to wait until they were awake again to alter Koswara’s memories and put up more barriers. Eros grinned.
“This is where my gift comes in. I can keep them both sleeping until you recover. We can put it to a vote if I give them dreams their meeting will be pleasant or their dreams will be their worst nightmares.”
“I thought you just controlled dreams?” Galih demanded. It was never reported to him Eros could put people to sleep, nor had he said anything this entire time. He could put the entire temple asleep.
“Sometimes, when Lilis was teaching me something I didn’t want to learn, she would only take a nap and have pleasant dreams about how well I learned it. I would play and talk with Asta until he told me I needed to wake her.”
“And why was your bond animal letting you put your mentor to sleep when you should have been learning?” Galih demanded with his hands on his hips.
“Because I’m tall and lanky. It’s foolish to teach me fighting styles that favor large men and brute force. If I’m fighting against someone, they aren’t going to announce their fighting style to me and expect me to fight the same way. I need to fight in ways that suits my body. That’s exactly how Isolde took out those men. She used the fighting style that suited her best and we all saw how that turned out. I was best at Nogwaimbo. Setting a good defense and using my enemies strikes and size against them. While Lilis was sleeping, Asta helped me with the fighting styles I would excel at and how to counter the ones I didn’t know.”
“How is Asta going to prepare you to block a blow with just words and not practice?”
“Our bond animals don’t just talk. They can send images, scenarios. It’s like you’re sharing a mind and sparring in your head. I’ve no idea about the others, but this was how Asta and I trained. Stop questioning Asta’s decisions. I’ve told you I can put them to sleep and keep them that way until I want them to wake.”
“Can you do it without fainting? Do you have to be sleeping with them?”
“It’s a command. I whisper for them to sleep, then I whisper for them to wake. Controlling dreams is like flying a pod. You just tell it what you want it to do.”
Galih was about to fire off more questions, but Gareng and Oleh both said Eros needed to get in there soon or they’d be wiping Hikmat’s memories of them again. They both looked like they were about to faint. Hikmat was staring off into space in a trance. Eros whispered sleep and it was like the word echoed and floated towards Hikmat. Hikmat slumped and Galih was soon hearing that same, grating, piggish snoring again.
Gareng and Oleh were both still standing, but swaying on their feet. Koswara finally spoke. “Whatever you did to him, you don’t have to do it to me. I’ll gladly cooperate to take him and the rest of those sniveling wretches down.”
Galih started ushering everyone out until he was alone with Koswara. “You betrayed your monarchy and you betrayed the master you served after that. Forgive me for not trusting a word out your mouth that I’m not next on that list. When they’ve recovered, they’ll be back for you.”
The new moon was in three days. Hikmat and Koswara would have to have their memories manipulated again once he had a better story for the two of them waking up in the forest. He needed Isolde and Elan. Between the two of them, they always came up with something.
Chapter 28
Sartika had at least gotten some sleep before it started to snow, but if what Isolde said was true, she and Elan hadn’t slept at all and it was nearly dinner. Isolde only managed to get a few more names out of the nine men they had knocked out. From what Ace and the others told all of them, the reason the problem in the military wasn’t as deep as they had feared as that most of the names they had belonged to men who weren’t well liked.
Every single man had the same thing in common that set them apart from most of the men in their military. Most men in their military joined because it put a roof over their head and allowed them to send money home. They came from the slums or areas only a little better. The names of the men who betrayed their brothers weren’t high born, but they came from families with money that thought they should have been given some of the titles of the high born by now.
None of them were first born and would inherit. There weren’t that many men like this in the military, mostly because most of them were used to a certain lifestyle and chose other professions. Boomer got into their records. Hog hit the motherlode with the nine he managed to recruit. They were all friends at the same university studying law. They played a prank on a classmate they didn’t like. It wasn’t enough to sentence them to burning, but it was considered bad taste and shamed their families. They were kicked out of school and joined the military.
The five other names Isolde got had similar stories that led to them joining up. Ace gave the word and now most of the cells in the military barracks were full. Isolde looked like she was about to faint and she refused to take a break for lunch, but she wouldn’t leave until she was sure no more names were hiding inside the heads of the additional five men. Now that she was done, everyone, including Elan, was telling her to go rest. She didn’t fight once she was sure her work was done.
Elan also looked exhausted and hungry, but he wasn’t going to leave her side when she needed his touch to keep working. Sartika’s maternal instincts kicked in, for both of them, and she followed them back to his chambers and started barking orders for food to be brought in. She was also hungry and hadn’t eaten all day. Elan and Isolde collapsed on the floor pillows in a mass of limbs, but somehow managed to do it without losing contact.
Sartika stood over them with her hands on her hips when she heard both their stomach complain loudly
from lack of food. “The new moon is not for three days. Is there any reason you refused to break for lunch and you, Elan, didn’t try to talk sense into her?”
“Mother, we’re both tired and we both have a headache. Can this wait until tomorrow?” Elan groaned.
Isolde had to be much more tired than Elan, but she sat up like she had energy to spare. “Because we could have been ambushed while we stopped to eat. If I hadn’t questioned those five men, there may have been more waiting for the right time to strike. For Elan and me to be alone with too many to fight off.”
There was a knock at the door and it was their dinner. Elan and Isolde looked like they wanted to be alone without her nagging, but she wasn’t letting this go. It didn’t seem to bother Isolde, but Elan was shooting her daggers when she sat across from them to eat with them. Isolde could probably pick up her thoughts that she wanted to talk to her alone, but Sartika thought that conversation was well in the future.
Most of the dinner conversation was mainly Sartika trying to ferret out what this bond meant and why it did what it did when they were completing it. Elan kept asking her to talk about something else and seemed to be getting upset with her.
“Elan is barely able to keep his head up. Once he’s asleep, I will talk to you about the doubts you have of me.”
Sartika was still getting used to hearing Isolde in her head and tried not to be obvious. Elan’s eyes were hooded and his head was nodding by the time they finished eating. Sartika had no idea how Elan was more tired than Isolde given what happened to her when she stole thoughts.
Isolde kissed his cheek and started to pull him to his feet. “Come to bed. You’re exhausted.”
Isolde was gone a while before she snuck back out into the sitting room and joined Sartika on the floor pillows. She was talking in hushed whispers. “I don’t know how long we can talk. He will notice me missing and come find me.”
Child of Fire, Child of Ice-A Sci-fi Romance Series (The Waljan Chronicles Book 1) Page 21