“It is what makes me Lord of the Realm,” I said. “Instead of just a guy with a lot of power.”
“I take it the title is not hereditary since you have older brothers,” Harmond said in an oblique question.
“No,” I said, not offering explanation. Once was enough today.
Peter, though, wouldn’t have it. “Seth’s position was won in hard battle, General. You saw the monument to it last night and heard the story of it. First even said that his position was won by Rite of Ordeal and Challenge. I stood beside him at that battle with the elf-king and his army. Every Fae here was at that battle and witnessed some part of it. He was ten times more powerful than Seth and had more than twenty thousand years of experience on him and yet he still failed against my brother.”
“Pretty unbelievable story. I thought it was a fairy tale,” Morelli said, barely withholding the disbelief and disgust he felt. But I could feel it bubbling at the top of his emotions and it was plain in his aura.
“Luckily, Colonel Morelli,” Alsooth piped in cheerfully and unexpectedly. “Your belief in the events of that day does not affect the truths of them. And since we were there, we know what happened.”
Ethan snickered at the brownie and Peter gave Alsooth a small bow. I suppose I should have been upset at his impertinence at my guest, but Morelli deserved it and Alsooth was the Warden of the Barracks and in authority here. And it was funny.
“Colonel Morelli, have you been on many diplomatic missions before?” I asked, continuing with my breakfast, though I’d lost my appetite.
“Yes, sir, though mostly as legal counsel to the ambassadors themselves,” he said, weary of suddenly being the center of attention.
“Ah, that would probably explain it, then,” I said politely. “Though I would think that even in a court of law there are more politic ways to express disbelief. Yours came precariously close to calling my brother a liar and all of my people as well. Not a terribly good negotiating tactic, I would think.”
“You must be quite accomplished in battle, then,” Harmond said appreciatively, and trying to draw me away from Morelli.
“Not particularly, no, but the tools I have at my disposal are and my brothers are teaching me.”
“’Teaching you’?” Morelli said, again his emotions were evident on his face.
“Yes, Colonel,” I said plainly. “I am still apprenticed.”
“My brother’s opponent was both out-fought and out-thought,” Kieran said. “But Seth was by no means prepared for the encounter and frankly we don’t know when he will be.” Morelli didn’t want to believe Kieran either, but he finally got enough of a clue to shut up. It might have been Harmond’s foot under the table slamming repeatedly into his leg and Barnett’s unsubtle grip on his fork in his fist and aimed at Morelli’s midsection.
“Are we talking about the Last Battle of the Arena?” Mike asked as he walked up to the table. “’Cuz I’d love to ask about how you shattered his sword in his hands. I barely caught a glimpse of it before I went down, but it was a phenomenal sight.”
“Good morning, Mike,” I said, cheerfully. “I wasn’t expecting you until well after dawn, at least. Letting Ian sleep in?”
“Morning, Seth,” Mike answered, sitting down beside Velasquez. “He was worried about Marty, so we stayed on that side last night. Dennis woke me a short while ago. Seems I missed more than just the Palace waking this morning.”
“Just a little,” Jimmy said. “Seth let us walk from their apartment to here, so they got to see a little of the Palace.”
“That was a little?” Barnett said, awed at the size already. “How big is this building?”
“Monstrous, I’m afraid,” I said. “I have no idea why it’s so large, but Gilán does nothing in small increments that I can tell.” Acting as though the thought had just occurred to me, I went on, “While my brothers and I see to something after breakfast, why don’t I have my assistants escort you through the Throne Room and out the front doors to the Promontory. That will give you the chance to both get a perspective on the Palace and see an excellent view of Gilán. So close to dawn, the dome will still be glittering quite beautifully.”
“You’ll be the envy of everyone on the US council,” Peter said lightly. “Fuller will be beside himself with jealousy.”
“Who is that?” Jimmy asked. “You’ve mentioned his name several times.”
“You’ll meet him soon enough,” I said. “We’ll have to deal with him. His son’s pretty cool, though. I like him.”
“That’s because he didn’t have a clue about who you were,” Ethan said sarcastically. I remembered his shock at figuring it out and grinned a little, too.
“Lord Daybreak,” Morelli ventured to speak again and Harmond tensed. “I’ve noticed the similarity between your First’s uniform and the uh, uniforms of Major Byrnes and his men. Is there a reason you’re making them wear them?”
“I have required that they cooperate with the brownies in the barracks and attend to their own needs while they’re here, Colonel,” I said, rather severely. “Those have been the limits of my requirements and they can attest to that. No one has been mistreated while in my hands. As to their current attire… aside from being far more comfortable than your garments, a lot stronger and hard wearing, I’m not exactly certain why they’ve chosen to wear the Guard uniform.”
I peeked into the gym and saw that Alsooth had already arranged it into stadium seating with a platform in the center. Plenty of room for everyone and more along the double-rimmed wall for any of the barracks staff. “Nicely done, Alsooth, thank you. Would you start the men in that direction, Major? And yes, Alsooth, you will be with me and the others can watch.
“General Harmond,” I turned to him as I spoke. Everyone finished eating but Mike and he was shoveling it in, now. “Once Mike realizes he has a few minutes and slows down, they will take you and the colonels on a leisurely walk through the Throne Room and out to the Promontory. Please stay with them as it’s easy to get lost in this place and they have a sense of the Palace that you don’t. I will be performing a bit of magic on the men with Agent Messner as witness. I will be lifting the compulsion currently on them and replacing it with one with less severe strictures. No, you don’t get a say in its phrasing.”
“Why can’t we be there?” Harmond asked the perfectly reasonable question.
“Because there’s a limit to how many people I can protect from him,” Kieran said mildly. Ethan burst through the anchor and into my cavern, laughing in fits. I gave him a projection of Kieran saying it again and he started banging on the table, shouting, “Stop!” repeatedly and laughing. He was quite calm and smiling pleasantly in the real world.
The noise level rose as the men got up and left the room, talking boisterously but the soft leather of their shoes barely registering on the marble floor. They weren’t marching out, but tables were emptying in uniform fashion and forming into four lines, two out each door. The kitchen had already cleared of humans, replaced by a few dozen brownies doing some last minute cleaning and waiting for our dishes.
“Besides,” I said, pushing my plate forward slightly and leaning into the table dramatically, “Even if it’s just a tiny bleed over, do you really want to continue our talks from last night telling me nothing but the whole truth every time I ask a question?” The three men blanched at the idea. “Maybe that would be fun. Shall we try that anyway? Perhaps find out what the rush is?”
“No, Lord,” Harmond said, standing abruptly, his colonels standing hurriedly after him. “I think your idea is best, after all.” We joined them in standing at a more sedate pace with Byrnes and Velasquez enjoying their discomfort a little too much.
“Mike, should I have Ellorn send someone to control the Road?” I asked, turning to him. “Or would you guys like the practice?” He perked up immediately, so did Steve and David. They all got excited, quickly, at the prospect of being left alone with a new toy.
“I think we can manage it,”
he said, smiling a cocky grin. “Three of us and three of them and the hall is empty. Don’t worry, gents, we’ll be a while before we get close to their speeds.”
“We’ll leave them with you then,” I said and turned to Harmond, “General, hopefully, I’ll be finished with this in a short time and meet up with you outside. Otherwise Mike will take good care of you. Again, don’t venture too far off alone, please.”
“Thank you, Lord Daybreak,” Harmond said as we made our way around the table and out into the hallway.
Once clear of the room, I asked, “Major, there seems to be an animosity between you and Colonel Morelli. Is there a prior history we should be aware of?”
He heaved a heavy sigh out and said, “Yes, sir, probably, though technically, it’s not supposed to matter anymore. He was my father-in-law. His daughter and I have been divorced three years now and she’s remarried since then.”
“Ouch,” I said, grimacing. “Still not an ideal defender in any case.”
“I don’t think they’re here to defend us, precisely,” he said as we entered the gym.
“Yeah, I got that impression, too,” I answered as we headed for the center of the room. “I’m not sure what their agenda actually is, though, and I don’t want to go digging around in their heads for it, so we’ll just wait and see if they spill it later. Just play it cool when we talk with them, regardless of the outcome of our discussion. But realize, Major, I won’t make this easy.”
“No, sir, I expect you won’t,” he said, grinning at me. It just irked me.
I broke the compulsion as we stepped up onto the podium. Not one of them blinked in response, but I wasn’t expecting one. The bond was strong, but very case sensitive. They wouldn’t have sensed it unless it was invoked at that time and since they were standing at attention and waiting for the ‘at ease’ call of their own volition, no one noticed. I was about to make that call when I heard Messner.
“Are you really going to have to protect me?” he asked Kieran in almost a whisper. Ethan did burst into laughter then, in the real world this time and Peter was close behind him. It made me smile and broke the tension in me somewhat.
“No,” Kieran answered quietly, smiling. “Seth has better control than that, trust me. That was for the rubes. Ethan, get up off the floor. It wasn’t that funny.” That, of course, just sent him into further fits. I capped his noisiness off until he could control himself and turned to Byrnes.
“At ease, guys,” I asked, raising my voice to project out. “Major, let’s start with the most obvious feature of today: the uniforms. Why have most of your men chosen to wear my color?”
“To show you the solidarity of their decision, Lord Daybreak,” Byrnes said. “I did say the numbers were overwhelming.”
“Yes, all but seventeen have gone certifiably insane in just a few days?” I asked incredulous of the number.
“I believe that I could argue just the opposite, Lord,” he said calmly. “In the last three days, all of us, those seventeen men included, have found a peace that has eluded us for all of our adult lives.”
“And you think that asking for asylum on Gilán will answer all of your problems?” I asked, trying to challenge his beliefs. “How? Isn’t that the same as running away from them? What makes you think that life here will be easy? Or even easier?”
“We don’t expect it to be easier, Lord,” Byrnes said. “We expect it to be a lot of hard work. Training for an entirely different kind of fighting, if that’s even what we end up doing here. You don’t get it, Seth. We’re in the same boat they were. You kicked our ass, but when you saw that we were getting thrown to the dogs, you helped us. You gave a damn about us. You gave a damn about them. And frankly, nobody has ever really done that for any of us. It gave us a sense of belonging, a sense of home that we’ve never had before.”
“So you’ve been talking with the faery,” I said. It wasn’t a difficult jump in logic. “You realize that the brownies are completely different types of creatures than you are, don’t you? It is their nature to be happy and helpful.”
“Yes, sir,” Byrnes said. “They were especially talkative the morning after the Great Claiming. Everyone was quite excited. They bubbled around all day. You should have seen the look on Ellorn’s face after you sent word that you would be using the monument as a centerpiece for a knowe for the Queens of Faery. He was so excited about the honor that he sent runners down the Road to tell everybody.”
“And this is so inspirational to all of you that you’re willing to give up your lives in the normal world for lives here on Gilán?” I asked skeptically. “Without knowing what those lives might be like?”
Before he could answer, I pushed a compulsion out onto the soldiers in the room, a strong one. It enforced honesty, just as I threatened the Pentagon brass with. If they expected me to lay a geas on them, they could handle this.
“We are,” Byrnes said evenly, the compulsion set perfectly in place.
“And the rest of you?” I asked looking around the room. Men nodded as I looked at them. Some even spoke, “Yes, sir.” Several of the green clad men were even nodding. I singled one out, waving at him to stand up, and said, “Okay, now you’re confusing me. You’re willing and unwilling?”
“Yes, sir, sort of, Lord,” he stood, nervously shifting from foot to foot. “I feel just as Major Byrnes is describing and I’d dearly love to stay, sir. It’s just that… I got a kid… I don’t get to see him much, and after this, I’m sure his douchebag step-dad will make it even harder. But after the way you made us feel, I couldn’t just abandon him. He might need me at some point in the future, as much as I doubt it.” He gave me a sad smile as he sat back down dejectedly.
I went through the other sixteen of the seventeen and they all had similar stories of someone they couldn’t leave behind because of me. Even though I couldn’t help but feel that they dug the holes they spoke from themselves, it wasn’t even a question of whether I could forgive that, but whether I had the right to enforce my will on their futures that bothered me.
“But you realize I can’t treat you any differently than I can the faery here,” I said, pausing slightly to look through the crowd of still cheerful faces. “You would have to accept the geas. Do you have any idea what that means?”
A random man that I just happen to be looking at stood. “Yes, sir, we think we do. You… invade our minds.” He paused and gulped at the idea. “But frankly, if you can do that and still think I’m worth having around? I can live with that. After what the brownies describe what having the geas feels like, with that connection to you and to this realm… If it’s anything close to that description? Yeah… I mean, yes, sir, Lord, we’d do it.”
“There are several unknowns but let’s start with what I do know,” I said, dazed by the man’s idealized statement. I rubbed my face to clear my thoughts and try to rid myself of some of the frustration. That’s when I noticed Shrank for the first time as he sat perched on Kieran’s shoulder, hidden in his brighter than bright aura that so few of us actually saw. “Hello, Shrank, I didn’t see you there.”
“Good morning, Lord Daybreak,” he squealed quietly. “Please don’t let me interrupt your deliberations. I know this is a difficult decision for you.” The cheerful exuberance and earnestness on his face as he pushed himself up off Kieran’s shoulder far enough to say that was comical. I had to remind myself that he wasn’t mine, even if he cared enough about me. Kieran turned slightly, smiling and sensing the tiny tendril of Gilán I sent ruffling through his wings.
“Accepting the geas will not, I repeat not make you like First,” I continued less severely but no less emphatically. “It will not make you like the brownies or any of the other faery. It may change you once you are linked to Gilán. That is the part I don’t know. Gilán is changing the faery in many ways and while it appears that all that is truly happening is that they are reverting to their true forms, perverted by their previous Lord some time before, I can’t be certain of that.
“Yes, sir, we know that,” she said. “But that’s part of it, ain’t it? Even if you don’t agree to it, if things go ass up and they still want to throw us in a hole and fill it with cement, you’re not gonna let that happen either, are ya? An’ we gotta live with that, too. I’m not sure how long I could before I stepped out into traffic. Sir.” She sat down looking depressed and the large man next to her slipped his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tightly to him. He didn’t look the type to be offering emotional support for anyone, but there he was.
I capped the podium off with the Stone and turned to the FBI. “Agent, please tell me you see something wrong here? Stockholm Syndrome, something! This is plain creepy.”
“That much we agree on,” Messner said, still watching them. “It is creepy, the way they’ve all latched onto you this way. And there’s no doubt that they’ve all suffered great psychological damage in their lives. That is evident in most of their auras. Maybe if you release their compulsions, that would help deflect a lot of the strength of their convictions.”
“He did that already,” Peter said softly, coming up beside Messner. “When we came in. It barely registered on their consciousness at all. He replaced it with a truth spell, a strong one, too. You’ve been hearing honest reactions from them all along.”
“All the more alarming, really,” Messner muttered, sighing. He looked at me, almost forlornly. “I just don’t know any better than you do, Seth. I’m sorry.”
“Kieran? Peter? Any ideas?” I asked hopefully, but they were both shaking their heads, too.
“No, not really,” Kieran said. “We’re seeing the same things you are, I’m afraid. It’s up to you. We’ll support you, either way you go, but that’s the only opinion I can offer.
“And if nothing else, we can employ them as security, if we need to,” Peter offered, which wasn’t such a bad idea once our business was up and running.
Sons (Book 2) Page 69
