Queen of the Sylphs (17 page)

Mace frowned. “No battle sylph not of the hive could have come anywhere close to the Valley without our sensing it.”

“Ril was able to travel in Meridal without being spotted,” Leon reminded him. “Still, I think it was Umut Taggart, my replacement as Alcor’s battler master. Bound battlers never stop projecting hate, so I think Umut came without him.”

“How long can a sylph live without energy from his master?” Solie asked.

“I don’t know,” Leon admitted. “I’ve always made sure never to find out.”

“A week,” Mace confirmed. “Less if they use up all the energy they have.”

Eferem’s capital was hundreds of miles away, across the Shale Plains and through forests and farmland. A week to travel that far and back would be tough.

Mace protested, his clenched fist on the table. “We would have caught any battler master in the area. We would have tracked him by his hate—like any man.”

Leon shook his head. “Someone in absolute control of his emotions won’t attract a battle sylph’s attention. That describes Umut completely. I’ve known the man for years.” He grimaced. “I trained him.”

Mace growled. “I think you need to prove this to me.”

“I agree,” Leon said.

“So, they’re still here?” Heyou asked in confusion.

“Chances are they’re not in the Valley anymore,” Leon said. “Those five couldn’t hide from us if they were, and Umut would have had to return with them—at the very least for his battler’s sake.”

“Mightn’t he have let his battler starve?”

“Never.” Leon knew the man. His tone was absolute.

Galway glanced at Solie. “The question now is, what do we do next?”

“Do?” she repeated.

“We can’t condone foreign powers sending assassins here and killing our people.”

“He’s right about that,” Leon agreed.

Solie shook her head. “What do you propose we do? Have our battlers destroy Eferem’s capital? There are thousands of innocent people there.”

“That would be foolish,” Leon agreed. “Nothing would guarantee the other kingdoms joining forces against us like that.”

“How about we just kill their king?” Heyou suggested.

Solie glanced at him, a little appalled. All this talk of killing sat horribly with her. Then again, they did have twenty-three people dead and five assassins on the loose who probably wanted another shot at her. The past week’s events had to be taken as acts of war.

Mace spoke up. “I don’t want to fight Thrall.”

All of the humans looked at him. Heyou seemed confused, but Ril nodded. “Me either.”

“I didn’t realize the king’s battler was special,” Leon said.

“He’s old,” Mace explained. “Extremely old.” And the older a sylph was, the more powerful.

“How strong is he?” Solie asked.

“He could wipe the Valley out,” Mace replied.

“Oh,
him.
I remember him,” Heyou said. He grinned at Solie. “I ran.”

“I d-don’t blame you,” she stammered.

“There are fifty battlers here,” Galway protested. “They’d stop him.”

“He could wipe the Valley out,” Mace repeated.

“But Alcor doesn’t know what he’s got,” Ril said with a shrug. “Too bad for him. He’s so much of a coward he’s never tested Thrall in a fight, and Thrall’s not going to volunteer the information. He’s just standing around waiting for Alcor to die so he can go home.”

“So, what do we do?” Solie asked.

The group considered for a time, tossing ideas around that didn’t really appeal to them.

At last, Heyou drove one fist into the other. “How about we subsume Thrall into the hive? Then he won’t be a problem for us.”

Leon rolled his eyes, while Ril pinched the bridge of his nose. Mace frowned. Galway reached over and ruffled the younger battler’s hair. “Think about it, boy. You’d need Solie to be right there, and there’s no guarantee that Thrall would just stand still and let us.”

“There’s no guarantee he won’t, either.”

“There’s also no guarantee that he won’t decide he should be the lover of the queen.”

“Oh.” Heyou frowned. “Never mind.”

“There’s just not much we can do,” Solie sighed. “Without those men, we have no proof Alcor tried anything. He’ll just deny it. He has no envoys here we can banish, and those merchants who come through from Eferem aren’t his men. He wouldn’t care if we sent them away and in the long run we’d just be hurting ourselves.”

“So we need to be vigilant,” Leon said. “If he tries anything else, which he probably will, we have to be ready.” He eyed Mace. “If there are any more accidents, we have to make sure that the battlers know not to all go straight for it. The rest of the hive still has to be protected.”

Mace nodded, seeing the sense in that.

“And we need to change who’s allowed to see Solie,” Leon continued, staring across the table at her. “Access to you should be based on more than just how threatening a visitor feels. People need a reason to see you, and if they’re not someone well-known and trusted, a battler should stay close. And by that I mean
in the room.
”

Solie nodded, not really liking this, though part of her was pleased at the idea her calendar might get a bit lighter. From the look on Ril’s face, it was going to get a lot lighter. Another part of her was very glad at the increased protection for her unborn baby.

“I’m still going to want to see my friends,” she pointed out.

“Well, they’re hardly people we don’t know or trust, are they?”

“True,” Solie agreed.

From there the discussion moved to the topic of rebuilding the warehouse, and what, if anything, they could salvage from the wreckage.

Leon walked calmly into the market, making his way through the crowds gathered at the vendors’ stalls, his hands in his pockets and the hood of his cloak raised to hide his face. He didn’t speak to anyone he passed, just made his way in silence, his thoughts calm and peaceful.

This is never going to work,
Ril told him.

Leon didn’t let himself feel any annoyance.
Don’t give me away,
he thought.

I won’t,
the battler groused.
I won’t have to.

He reached the end of the market, coming to the roadway that led to the queen’s palace, the arches reaching high into the air even though the throne room itself was underground. He walked toward it, steering clear of the crowds.

A dozen battlers suddenly dropped down on him, slamming him painfully to the ground as they cheered their victory, jostling one another and shouting excitedly, laughing. Bruised, Leon lifted himself onto his forearms and looked up at Mace.

“Did you have to land on me quite so hard?”

Mace raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”

“I’m getting too old for this,” Leon grumbled as he climbed to his feet.

Ril appeared and helped him up, eyeing his master with an unhappy frown. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

“Indeed.” Mace crossed his arms. “You said you could evade us.”

Gingerly, Leon rubbed his jaw and worked it from side to side. It felt like a tooth was loose. “I thought I could.”

“Idiot,” Ril sniffed. “They
know
you. They’d find you no matter what your emotions were.”

Leon paused in checking his jaw, thinking about that, and wondered if perhaps he was losing his mind. Was it old age? He hadn’t seen that likelihood. “You could have mentioned that before they all landed on me,” he pointed out, grimacing at his battler.

Heyou grinned. “That wouldn’t have been as much fun.”

“I see.”

Ril rolled his eyes and grabbed his master’s arm. “Come on,” he said, dragging him off. “I’m taking you to see Luck.”

Disappointed but still knowing he was right that an enemy could walk past a battler, Leon let himself be dragged along like a misbehaving child. The situation amused him enough that he started smiling. The people who’d seen the sudden attack continued to gape, at last grudgingly returning to whatever they had been doing.

A basket of corn on her arm, Sala walked forward. “Was that some sort of game?” she asked.

Leon saw Mace look down at the young woman and shrug. “Not really,” he said. Then he turned, likely heading back to his duties with the continuing conviction that no one could get past one of his kind.

For once in his life he had to think about Luck first. That’s what
she’d
said, her tone nearly scornful even while her words were sympathetic. The people of this Valley were killing Luck, wearing her slowly out with their needs, their weaknesses . . . A lot of the injuries she healed, doctors and wise women could fix. Those injuries didn’t need Luck, but no, all day, every day, people came to their cottage with the most pathetic of complaints, asking for Luck to heal them and not giving much of anything in return. True, sylphs were paid for their work, but Luck never received anything even remotely good enough to be worth the effort she put forth. The effort that she could be putting into
him.

Zem coughed and pressed to his mouth one of the handkerchiefs he always carried. Immediately, Luck reached out to put her hands on him, and the wonderful healing energy flowed. Zem sighed, relaxing.

But the nervousness came back almost immediately as the carriage swayed and rocked up the slope that led out of the Valley. He could hear men and horses outside, shouting back and forth to one another as the caravan went on its way. Zem tried not to think too much, afraid he’d bring the battle sylphs down on him, but they reacted to malice. He was only frightened.

Where are we going?
Luck asked him silently.

Zem reached out to cup her cheek, and she pressed against his palm. Her skin felt waxy but warm, soft, and pliant. He smiled at her. “We’re going to where you’ll be appreciated,” he promised.

They were headed where she wouldn’t have to heal every little knee scrape of every ungrateful child in this backward Valley, all for a mere pittance. Sala had promised them that. In Yed, healers only helped the richest of men and women, and they were paid huge sums of money in return. Sala had told Zem where to go, whom he had to see, and how he could become rich. Luck would be able to focus almost all of her attention on him, then, just as she should. Sala had even loaned him the money to pay for his passage on this merchant train.

The little man swallowed and settled back in his seat, his coat clutched tightly around himself, even though the interior of the carriage was already very warm. For now, the men he rode with didn’t even know about Luck’s presence. It was safer that way. It was safer overall if no one knew they were gone until they were too far away to drag back.

For her part, Luck sat across from him in silence, content and curious to follow him wherever he chose to lead.

Chapter Twelve

Summer was passing, the harvest was in and people were beginning to prepare for winter. Throughout the Valley moods were high, most people unconcerned with anything more strenuous than their families and friends.

For the council and all others in the know, things were a bit more stressful. Still, as time passed, Solie found it hard to keep worries about assassins and enemy kings foremost in her mind. Yes, battlers were around her all of the time, but they’d pretty much been there all the time anyway; and now that her morning sickness had passed, she was too mellow to care.

Her hands cupping her rounded stomach, Solie wandered down the road toward the summoning hall, smiling when she was greeted by each of the people she passed. Dillon and Heyou followed. Those two were the sylphs most commonly with her, for familiarity’s sake more than anything else. Many of the women in the Valley had offered their own battlers as bodyguards, like Sala, but Solie liked Dillon’s quiet and of course she loved Heyou.

Dillon wore the form of a large black cat, his head even with her thigh. Heyou was in his usual shape. Dillon only stayed during the day, spending the evenings with his own master, as Solie didn’t feel she really needed two battlers with her at night. Since the warehouse incident and the escape of the assassins, nothing had happened in the Valley at all—except, of course, for Zem leaving with Luck. But while that was infuriating, it was hardly surprising. He’d always been a greedy, petty little man.

It was, however, a problem. As queen, Solie could order Luck to return, but that risked the sylph’s survival if she wasn’t able to convince Zem to join her, and Solie doubted the little man would ever dare show his face again after deserting them. To solve the problem, they’d been trying a different tactic.

Solie went into the summoning hall, which was a large, airy building with so many windows that the interior was lit by daylight. It was a single chamber several hundred feet across, the summoning circle inlaid on the floor in precious stones brought by earth sylphs from deep underground. The pillars that framed the windows were creamy white marble and heavily embossed. It was a beautiful place, as the sylphs felt it ought to be.

Twenty priests stood arrayed around the circle, chanting. Their words reverberated through the room, echoing from the perfect acoustics of the rounded ceiling. The circle itself was glowing, with a second circle of energy hanging directly above. This circle started to glow as well. The space inside shimmered with changing colors.

A woman with a club foot stood in the center of the circle, looking nervously upward. She was the offering; her injury, they hoped, would be attractive to a healer on the other side. Such sylphs weren’t simple to find. Healers weren’t common in the other world, either, and most stayed in their hives. Even when sent out to heal an injured sylph, they weren’t easy to lure away. First, they had to want to come. Second, they had to get past their battle sylph guardians. No hive wanted to lose healers.

Near Petr, the head priest, was a fire sylph. She wasn’t Petr’s—he’d refused a new sylph when his first was killed nearly a decade before—but her master stood nearby. The fire sylph had shown a great sensitivity for what waited on the other side of the gate. She wore the shape of a little girl made of flickering flame, and Ash was her name. She liked to have a specific purpose beyond the standard role of “Keep things lit, keep things warm.” Her job was to locate sylphs—or rather, to determine what sylphs were on the other side of any gate they opened.