Paladins of the Storm Lord

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “Storm Lord?”

  “Shut up, son. God is talking. Everything would have been fine if the mayor had just remembered that.”

  If Blake had a comment, he wisely kept it to himself. Caroline was at the temple, just as Dillon had told her to be. At least someone knew how to follow a fucking order.

  “Is there somewhere we can be alone?” Dillon asked.

  “Um, my room? Yours?” She cast a skeptical, worried look at Blake, probably wondering if Dillon was asking her to have a threesome.

  The thought made him chuckle. “Not that kind of alone, baby. Telepathically speaking.”

  She sighed, a relieved sound, and nodded. “The roof. But no one would listen to your thoughts anyway.”

  “Better safe than sorry. Lead the way.”

  When they emerged onto the abandoned roof, Dillon noticed that morning had become afternoon. Funny, he hadn’t thought that much time had passed. Dillon still had one arm around Blake, who was looking more and more concerned, but good for him, he didn’t try to run.

  “My friend here needs a new memory,” Dillon said.

  Blake tried to push away then, and Dillon swept his leg out from under him. When he tried to scramble upright, Dillon snaked an arm around his neck. “Son, whether we do this the easy way or the hard way is nothing to me.” He looked to Caroline. “Just take the last few hours from him, everything with me.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes, a good soldier.

  *

  Horace bent over Natalya’s bed, all his energy focused on keeping her power locked down. He’d had a nap at Simon’s insistence, but when he woke up, he felt strong enough to try to help Natalya. The thought that he might have healed his own mind in his sleep was intriguing.

  Simon sat beside him, helping him focus. When they’d first seen each other again after their kiss on the roof, Simon had seemed shy, and Horace had nearly been overwhelmed with the desire to kiss him again. Restraint was important, he told himself. They had work to do.

  Natalya blinked and opened her eyes. “Horace?”

  “You’re all right, Nat. We’re holding your power back.”

  “I can feel it waiting.” She smiled, and it had none of the panic Horace remembered. A little creepy, but Natalya had always been enamored with power.

  Horace and Simon lowered their shields by degrees, seeing if she could contain the power. Simon instructed her on how to breathe, and with their shields, she slowly got ahold of herself.

  “Can you keep me shielded on your own?” she asked Horace.

  He glanced at Simon. “With you awake and helping, I think so.”

  “Good.” She nodded toward Simon and then at the door. “You can go.”

  Simon stiffened, frowning.

  “Nat!” Horace said.

  “No, it’s fine.” Simon straightened his shirt and walked toward the door. “I’ll be around if you need to summon me again.”

  “Thank you,” Horace called as Simon shut the door hard behind him. “Nat, that was so rude!”

  “Forget about him. Do you know what this means?”

  “You’re still a little crazy?”

  “With the gifts the Storm Lord has given us, we can do anything!”

  “Right,” he said slowly.

  “Drop your shields a bit.”

  He did so, ready to snap them back if need be, ready to put her out if she needed that. She tested her limits slowly, containing the great power within her, and he felt joy radiating from her in waves.

  As his shields slipped further, he had to focus more on himself, trying to shut out those around him, but someone in the temple was using strong telepathy, too much to ignore. He thought he might have felt it with his shields up, as powerful as he’d become. The telepathy was going on above him, would have been out of his reach before, but not now.

  He couldn’t help looking, curious to find out what was worth so much output. He wouldn’t pry, he told himself, just a casual glance, a little nosiness that wouldn’t hurt—

  He felt new memories, someone erasing old thoughts, a delicate practice, hardly ever used unless there was lots of money involved, and then never like this. A man was struggling, and the Storm Lord ordered his memories to be erased against his will. But why command something so illegal? Horace could sense the blood slowing in the man’s body as the Storm Lord’s arm tightened around his neck, his gaze locked on Caroline’s face.

  Horace kept his power away from her, knowing the only reason she hadn’t sensed his intrusion was because she was so focused. And if she was busy, she wouldn’t be able to stop a peek into the Storm Lord’s head—so forbidden—but everything that was happening between the three of them was forbidden.

  The Storm Lord’s thoughts were so loud, beating at Horace’s head: the mayor stiffened by lightning, dead on the floor; the cracks in the wall; the blood; the ghost girl; head tingling now; someone in his head, maybe the same people who’d shown him the ghost; who the fuck is in my mind?

  “Horace!”

  Natalya shook him, and he focused on her frown, his shields slamming down again.

  “What were you doing?” Natalya asked.

  “The Storm Lord is on the roof.”

  “So?”

  “He’s…”

  She gripped his arm hard. “If you were spying on our god, the one who gave us such gifts.” Her fingers dug in harder, but he couldn’t drop his shields to will away the pain. “I won’t be able to forgive you.”

  Horace looked into her eyes and didn’t recognize the zealot he saw there. “Nat?”

  She released him and then gestured for the door. “Whatever he’s doing, it doesn’t concern mortals like us.”

  “Mortals?”

  “You can go.” But her gaze still pinned him to the spot. “Don’t let me catch you snooping again.”

  When she released him, he hurried from the room, wondering if it was the new gifts that had changed her or if the Storm Lord had done something to increase loyalty, maybe when he wasn’t killing politicians and covering it up. Horace looked for Simon but saw no one. He couldn’t keep what he’d seen to himself, no matter what Natalya said. He had to tell someone. Murder couldn’t just go unpunished.

  He flashed through all the people he knew and landed on the capable paladin who’d led the expedition to the research station: Cordelia Ross, the mayor’s niece. If anyone wanted to know, it would be her. With his shields tight, he hurried from the temple, heading for the Paladin Keep.

  *

  Lydia sat on her cushions and let her head sink against her chest. Freddie had cleared the rest of her appointments, telling everyone that the prophet of Gale was too exhausted to see any futures that afternoon.

  She’d had night after night of bad dreams, that same fire wiping out future after future. She’d seen it in the futures of some clients, had resisted the urge to follow Freddie’s future or her own. She was thankful she hadn’t followed either of them in her sleep. Knowing what was coming was just too hard sometimes.

  She fell sideways on her cushions and curled into a ball. As sleep towed her downward, Freddie covered her with a blanket and brushed her shoulder. Lydia’s power sleepily wound around her.

  The skein of Freddie’s future whirled out of control, pausing as night fell to show Freddie standing at Lydia’s side on a platform behind the palisade. As slowly as if moving through sap, Freddie leaned far forward and peered into the darkness beyond, watching boggins rush Gale in the deepening twilight.

  Lydia jerked awake. “We need to warn everyone!”

  Freddie leapt back. “What?”

  “Come on. We need to find the Storm Lord. We need to tell everyone.” She couldn’t prevent whatever was happening, but she’d be there to meet it. Whatever else happened, that was certain, and now she had only to follow in the footsteps of the future.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Carmichael couldn’t stop staring at the body. It looked wrong somehow, and not just because she’d rather Pau
l be alive. Movement near the door caught her attention, and Lieutenant Ross stepped inside, looking at Paul’s body as if locking on a target. Carmichael had heard her yelling outside, but she seemed to have gone from anger to shock. She’d moved through the whole house, but if she’d found anyone, she didn’t say so.

  “No one answered the door,” Carmichael said. “But I didn’t look everywhere. Someone could have sneaked out while I was in here.”

  When Ross didn’t respond, Carmichael snapped her fingers. “Wake up, Lieutenant. We’ve got a murderer to find.” Ross still didn’t move, didn’t even have a hint of anger anymore. Carmichael sighed. “I met him a long time ago, you know.”

  “I know. Liam and I—”

  “No, before Liam and you, when I’d just made lieutenant, and he was a mayor’s aide, before he worked for the guilds.” She tried to focus on his face and not the hole in his chest. “I was on guard duty at the keep a lot, and he was always running errands for the mayor. We didn’t talk much, but when we did, he moaned about all the shit the mayor had him do, including her laundry. He annoyed the hell out of me.”

  Ross frowned as if wondering if this was the right story to tell over a body.

  “I remember one day he was whining about some stain on the mayor’s jacket, telling everyone he had to figure out a way to get it out or be fired, so I said, ‘Take a bit of water root, rub it over the spot, then wind the whole thing up tightly, small as you can get, and shove it up your ass.’ And he stared at me for almost a whole minute before he laughed so hard he nearly pissed himself.” Carmichael chuckled. “He quit that day, and I didn’t see him again until after you kids were older and we started working together. He’d learned to keep his complaints to himself by then.”

  Cordelia nodded slowly. “I’ll remember that.”

  “The story or how to get a stain out of a jacket?”

  If that amused her at all, she didn’t show it. “We should have a healer examine him.”

  Carmichael looked at the work the poleaxe had done. She wanted to argue, to say that they knew what had killed him, but something about the body still looked wrong. “I’m going to get some leathers to guard the house, too. See that—”

  Someone else moved near the door. Carmichael stepped in that direction, reaching again for a sidearm that wasn’t there, but the man who knew where it was stepped into the light, staring at Paul Ross’s body.

  “Blake?” Ross asked.

  “They told me he was dead,” Blake said as he nodded.

  Carmichael backed him into the hall. “Where did you put my gun?”

  He turned a stupid stare on her, and she resisted the urge to slap him. “Your gun?”

  “Where?”

  He frowned as if searching his memory before he shook his head, moved to a little table, and pulled her sidearm from a drawer. She snatched it from him and stowed it in her holster.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “I…went out to get something.”

  She looked to his empty hands. “Where is it?”

  His frown came back slowly. “I don’t remember.”

  His confusion seemed genuine, but she didn’t know how good an actor he was. “You’re coming with me. You and the housekeeper both.” Reach would squawk, but Carmichael wasn’t letting her best suspects go. “Lieutenant.” Ross was still looking at the body with something between sorrow and anger. “Can you hold the fort until help comes?”

  “The healer?”

  Carmichael licked her lips. “And the leathers. And the undertaker.”

  Ross made a noise that sounded like a growl blended with a sigh. “I’ll hold the fort.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “He deserved better than this.”

  Didn’t they all? Carmichael rounded up Blake and the housekeeper, ignoring Reach’s glares, and herded them toward the keep.

  *

  The house was so quiet. Cordelia tried not to look at him and failed with every breath. Every conversation they’d had, every time she’d insulted him or pushed him to see what he would take, played through her mind. She went through every time she’d blown him off or rolled her eyes or had a snappy comeback.

  But he’d loved her snappy comebacks. His little smiles were the most affectionate ones.

  When he’d told her that her parents were dead, he’d held her hands. He hadn’t complained when she’d raged around the house, breaking everything that would break. He’d held her while she cried, putting his own grief to the side and casting her sadness in the starring role.

  Maybe she should talk to his body. She’d heard of people speaking to loved ones after they’d died, but Paul couldn’t hear her regret, her sadness. If he could, he’d make it more important than his, even though he was the dead one.

  She coughed a laugh that turned into a sob before she muzzled it. Where had Reach gone? Maybe they could share this grief, but Reach was just angry, and her rage would feed Cordelia’s own until they did something stupid. Paul would want them to be smart.

  Someone knocked at the door, and even though Paul would have urged calmness, she stalked to the door and yanked it open, ready to yell that the mayor was dead, and whoever was coming to bother him should feel bad.

  Then she saw the flat, undertaker’s cap, and the words stuck in her throat.

  “Lieutenant?” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She stood aside. “You can’t take him yet.”

  “I’m to take his measurements before the cart arrives.”

  The cart. The mayor of Gale was going to ride in the death cart like everyone else. They’d have to save the pomp for the funeral.

  No, there was no “they.” She’d have to plan the funeral alone, the last of her family. It made her head spin, and her gorge rose before she made herself breathe.

  *

  Lazlo followed the young soldier to the mayor’s house. After Natalya had dismissed him, he’d roamed the halls, looking for something to do. When a paladin came asking for someone to examine the dead mayor, he’d jumped at the chance to leave. But now he hoped the mayor’s family knew he couldn’t bring back the dead.

  An armored paladin let him into the mayor’s office where the body was being measured, probably for a coffin. Lazlo didn’t come close but let a tendril of power out, sensing the destruction of flesh and muscle. He thought that might be it, opened his mouth to say that the hole in the man’s chest was clear for everyone to see, but his power touched something else: charred synapses, cooked organs and muscles. He flashed back to the Atlas’s bridge, to his newly awakened power. His senses had been feeding him information he couldn’t decipher at the time, but now he knew what he’d felt. An electrocuted body, just like this one.

  Lessan and the mayor, killed in the same way. But Dillon had killed Lessan, and there were no live wires for the mayor to grab.

  “Well?” the paladin asked.

  “He…” Lazlo swallowed.

  “Can we remove him?” the undertaker asked.

  “No.” The paladin moved to look Lazlo in the eye. “He what?”

  “He was stabbed.”

  The paladin continued to stare before she turned to the undertaker and nodded. She didn’t watch while the body was bundled out; she stared at the dent in the plaster.

  “What have you discovered?” a voice asked from the door.

  Lazlo turned and took a step back. “A drushka?” But there was always one in the city; he remembered that. “The ambassador?” Her limbs seemed a little longer than a human’s, her skin covered in whorls. She stepped forward with a smooth, gliding gate, and he had to resist letting his power play over her to see how she differed from a human on the inside.

  She didn’t even glance at him. “What are you doing, Sa?”

  The paladin continued to frown at the wall. “It looks as if he was stabbed head on, but Carmichael would have to stab up. She didn’t do this, Reach.”

  “Then whom?”

  They b
oth looked to Lazlo. He shook his head and hoped the motion didn’t look wildly guilty. “I can’t tell who stabbed whom.” That was true, at least.

  “You can go,” the paladin said.

  Lazlo tried not to frown. Being dismissed twice in one day was two times too many. He supposed he should forgive both Natalya and this woman. One was injured, and this one seemed more upset than a routine investigation would make her.

  “Who was he?” Lazlo asked. “To you, I mean.”

  “My uncle.”

  The drushka glanced at him. “My love.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, anger forgotten. “For both of you.”

  The drushka inclined her head. The paladin continued to stare at the wall until another armored paladin stepped into the office. “Delia,” he said, “I just heard. I’m so sorry.”

  She nodded at him, her lips wobbling as if her angry look might collapse at any moment.

  “There’s something happening.” The new paladin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “People are rushing around.”

  “Any idea why?” Lazlo asked.

  He shrugged. “Not sure. If I were you, I’d head back to wherever you’re supposed to be.”

  Lazlo nodded and fled. If there was an attack of some sort, Samira and Horace might need his help. And Dillon?

  Lazlo shuddered. Had it been an accident? Then why the blood, the stab wound? What in the hell had gone on in that room? Did he want to know? If it was an accident or murder, what did that mean? Dillon should have been able to keep his powers in check. He’d had enough practice through the years; they all had. Maybe he was coming apart. But did that mean he needed Lazlo’s help, or that Lazlo needed to get as far from him as possible?

  *

  Horace lingered outside the Paladin Keep. People bustled here and there, and others guarded the entrance. He’d already asked after Lieutenant Ross and been told she wasn’t available. They weren’t going to let him wander around, hoping to run into her. The few paladins he’d managed to stop didn’t know where she was. As time went on, messengers came and went, and the bustling doubled, then tripled.