Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (39 page)

Alec joined her in looking at a woman who was pregnant, but also suffering seizures. Alec immediately understood that Rief feared to give the woman a dose of medicine for one health issue because it would have an impact on the other. “Hold my hand and pray with me,” he said quietly to the woman and Rief, and as they held hands, he released his powers, fixing the nerves and the brain circuits that were causing the seizures. Rief then gave the woman herbs to boost the health of the embryo.

Not much later, Alec looked at Rief, and held his nearly empty bag over his head. She nodded agreement. “We have run out of medicines,” Alec said loudly. “We have to finish for today.” A loud groan and several angry comments arose.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” a voice asked.

“If we can. We don’t know,” Alec said quickly, before Rief might answer yes.

The room slowly emptied as the crowd dispersed, so that Alec and Rief were able to walk down to where Bethany was working with a crew to install a sewer pipe below the street. Bethany was holding the flow of water back while the crew worked in a particular area, then established a flow around, through, or even over the pipes as needed.

She saw them standing on the side of the street. “Have we done enough for today?” she asked the crew chief. He agreed they had, both because she had driven them hard during the afternoon, and because her disposition had been so strict and unfriendly during that time, a great change from her usual personality.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked the healers.

They nodded their heads. “I’ll be back tomorrow. We made good progress today,” she told the crew as she stepped through the mud and joined Alec and Rief. They walked in silence back to the hotel. “I’d like to freshen up before dinner. Is that alright?” she asked.

“
That will be good,” Alec agreed, and they set a time to meet in the common room. Bethany went to the desk, received a letter, and went upstairs.

“Alright Tarnum, tell me what is going on?” Rief said as soon as they were back in their room.

“Rief, I don’t know. I thought Bethany was back in Oyster Bay. I never expected her to be here. You heard me talking about going up to Bayeux just before we saw her. But,” he hesitated, “I do think she is the one we are supposed to take with us back to the Cave.” He did not tell her about John Mark’s conversation about Rief’s unexpected appearance, and the complications the prophet implied it would create. That made sense if he was supposed to journey with Bethany.

“Rief, I have never, ever tried to mislead you about anything, have I?” he asked.

“Well, there’s the fact you were a high lord of the Dominion pretending to be a lowly servant in the empire,” she quickly snapped back.

Alec sighed again. “But that wasn’t me misleading you. It was the circumstances I was in,” he protested.

“Bethany said, ‘never fall in love with a busy man,’ and I think I know why. ‘Circumstances’ will always get in the way,” Rief answered.

“You know what, let’s just wait and have dinner with Bethany and get this all out in the open among all three of us, shall we?” Alec said abruptly. “There’s no point in me arguing with you here, then going down and arguing with her there, then the two of you arguing with each other after that.”

“I don’t expect that Beth and I have anything to argue about. Do you think we’re going to fight over you?” Rief said icily. “But I agree we might as well wait for dinner.”

They went down the stairs and walked towards a distant table in the dining room, where they sat in silence and waited for Bethany. “I’ll have a glass of Goldenfields Red,” Rief told the waitress. “Me too,” Alec said.

Rief raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you drink.”

“I shouldn’t,” Alec admitted.

“Shouldn’t do what?” Bethany asked as she sat down at the table with them.

He ordered a glass of wine,” Rief said.

“Really? You’ve got him that rattled already?” Bethany responded.

“I’m sure it’s seeing you that has done him in,” Rief replied, as she saw Bethany motion for another glass of wine to be added to the order.

“Have you ever been drunk, Alec?” Bethany asked.

She watched in surprise as Rief reached over and yanked on his shirt, pulling it down his arm suddenly. “Tell her about the time you got drunk and got a tattoo,” Rief said as Bethany craned to see his shoulder.

“A sword? I expected it to be some girl’s name,” Bethany told Rief in a false whisper. “Like maybe Imelda’s.” She held up the letter she had received at the desk. “I just got a letter from Allisma. She says you are lying unconscious in a tent at the battlefront, and that you are rumored to have proposed to Imelda while you were together in the wilderness out attacking lacertii. Although everyone there insists you should be crawling back to me.”

They stopped talking as the waiter arrived with three glasses of wine, took their orders for meals, then left.

“May I explain what has happened, from the beginning?” Alec asked.

“I’d love to hear it,” Bethany said with cloyingly false sweetness. “But first,” she motioned for the waiter to bring an entire bottle of wine. “This is on your bill by the way, since you’re filthy rich.”

You told me you had money but you never said you were filthy rich,” Rief accused.

Alec rolled his eyes, then began his story from the day the carnival was attacked in Riverside, and his first encounter with the Cave of John Mark. Both girls settled into listening quietly through his story of his first spell in Goldenfields and the battle with the ingenairii who chased him after he healed Lewis. “No wonder Fallion hated you so much,” Bethany said.

Alec’s story moved on to his arrival in Oyster Bay. “My very first day there Bethany started dumping buckets of water on me,” he explained to Rief.

“Why?” Rief asked.

“Because,” Bethany said, her cheeks reddened slightly

“But then the back of my dress was cut off!” Bethany rebutted.

“Why?” Rief asked again.

“Because,” Alec mocked.

“So you can just make water appear out of thin air? Is that what happened to the creepy guy in the bar? Rief asked, as Bethany nodded.

His story continued with meeting Noranda, then sealing her in a time containment, and his feat of healing Cassie’s legs.

“Tell me precisely what you did,” Rief asked, and Alec was diverted for several minutes in discussing the medical intricacies of the operation.

“Are you a healer ingenaire too?” Bethany asked.

“
She is,” Alec answered. “She passed through the Cave of John Mark and received the powers.”

Their meal came and went. Alec moved on to his return to Goldenfields and the battle there, then the arrival of the ingenairii who fled from Oyster Bay. He talked about the creation of the cavalry, and their ride to Bondell.

“See that scar on his face?” Bethany asked Rief.

“The one under his eye that Mooreen gave him?” the former slave clarified.

“No, the one across his nose. He got that from Imelda, who he put in charge of the cavalry. Who he proposed marriage to,” Bethany said with warmth in her voice.

“In Bondell I tried to use two different powers at the same time, and healer powers and warrior powers are especially adverse to one another,” Alec said. “It wrecked my ability to use either power, and it wrecked my physical health as well.”

“He was a mess,” Bethany reminisced.

“Then the cavalry had to take the princess back to Goldenfields, and I insisted Bethany go with them, to provide water and to be a companion to the princess,” Alec said.

“When we parted, I whispered in his ear ‘I love you,’” Bethany added, “and he didn’t say anything. Nothing. Not a word.”

“Tarnum!” Rief said.

“I am truly sorry about that. I wanted to say it a hundred times later, but you weren’t there, or you didn’t want to hear,” he countered. “Of course that was not too long after she had told me she would wait for me forever, too,” he said defiantly as Bethany shifted her eyes uncomfortably.

Alec moved on to his pilgrimage to the pool in the Bondell dessert.

“You were unconscious in that cave for three months?” Bethany asked. “I didn’t realize you were that way for so long.”

“And when I returned to Bondell, another invasion had occurred, and I had to fight two warrior ingenairii without my own warrior powers,” Alec added.

“How did you do that?” Bethany asked, caught up in the drama.

“I managed to defeat the weak one, then let the other one pierce my leg with his sword to trap the blade, and then I killed him. After that I healed my leg,” Alec explained. Both girls turned slightly green.

The tables around them had filled and emptied and refilled and emptied again as they continued to occupy their corner and listen to Alec’s saga.

“So I continued up to Oyster Bay, and when I saved a sailor, they talked me into drinking, and I woke up with this,” he tapped his shoulder. “I drank a lot that night,” he said looking at the second bottle of wine on their table.

“And when I got to Oyster Bay, I started killing the usurpers, until Hingis’s daughter shamed me into stopping the killing. But I absorbed all the power from the rogue ingenairii, then created an explosion with their own powers that killed most of them off,” he added.

“That’s when you created the new fountain by the gate?” Bethany realized.

“And then I went on my way to Stronghold to finally finish healing Noranda,” he started.

“The girl you jilted before you jilted me before you jilted Imelda before you get ready to jilt Rief?” Bethany said bitingly.

“No. No,” Alec insisted. “Let me tell the story.”

He described sitting in Red Water, and writing a love letter to Bethany.

“But I never got it until much, much later. Later than after I’d seen you. I wish I’d received it right away,” she cried.

And he explained his arrival in Stronghold, the betrayal and retreat, and then his second arrival with the party of the younger Locksforts. He told about the visit to John Mark’s tomb and the balancing on the scales and the loss of powers again, before he healed Noranda.

“And she married Brandeis, her first boyfriend?” Rief asked. “After all you went through to save her life?”

“That’s women for you,” Alec said unintentionally out loud, and sputtered as cold water splashed in his face seconds later.

“If you want to leave here with any clothes uncut, you’ll not do that again,” he threatened Bethany.

The torture in the dungeon and the battle for control of the clan followed, and led to his eventual return to Oyster Bay. “Where the girl I had thought about for weeks and weeks across hundreds of miles in danger and through torture and in flight, that girl told me she’d found someone else. After I’d poured my heart out to her in that letter, she’d found someone else.”

“Oh Alec, you were gone and unconcerned about me for months, while Tritos was present and considerate and affectionate,” Bethany said.

“And then I threw a ball at the palace,” Alec said.

“Since he was the crown protector and basically the same as the king of the Dominion,” Bethany added.