“I thought you knew where I was,” Cassie said. “I didn’t intend to go there, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m ashamed I did that; it felt like I was spying on you, looking into the windows of your home to watch you. You could have done the same to me, I know you started to, but then you stopped; you only focused on trying to help me instead. I knew where you were and where you were going inside me. Alec, if you had looked, you would have known that I feel so much love and desire for you that I will always worship you. And now I know that you have feelings for me but keep them buried away as inconvenient, and I don’t know what to say or do.”
“Cassie, I do care about you, and I love Noranda, and
I enjoy Bethany, and I can’t have it all ways and live with myself,” Alec told her. “I want to continue to be as close to you as I can, but I don’t want to hurt you or them.”
“Please let us continue to be closer than friends, but less that intimate,” Alec pleaded.
Cassie rolled over, and looked in Alec’s eyes from just inches away. “That is what you want?” she asked harshly.
“Alec, since the day you came to me in the hut in the village and began to treat me, I’ve loved you. Now I know you have desires for me too, but I’m not important enough for you to do anything about. That makes me feel so upset, and now you say you’d like to just sweep this under the rug. Again, you’re telling me my love isn’t important enough for you take notice of me and change anything in your life.” She rose. “I’ll see you back at the shop,” she said without further comment and left the room.
Alec rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. He felt tears well up in his eyes, as he thought about how a matter of seconds trying to do something good had just caused so much to go wrong. Why God? Why make us both suffer like this for having good intentions to give Cassie powers, he silently asked. He sat up on the floor. What to do now, he wondered. What will the shop be like tonight? And why had Cassie become so confrontational? Alec suddenly wondered if the murkiness in his own powers, the powers that were now a part of her, had tainted Cassie’s soul, and changed her.
He stood up, rubbed his eyes, and left the room to return to his office. He tried to shake off his emotional turmoil, and to settle back into his Guard personality. “Have there been any names forwarded as possible candidates to become part of the Duke’s bodyguard?” Alec asked Mortis as he re-entered his office Mortis nodded. “Then schedule all of them to come in tomorrow to the armory after the officers and I’ll test their work to see how well they can serve.
“Now, about Elcome’s supplies. I don’t know if we can ever really know exactly what or how he apparently stole. Tell Tarpa to ask each squad leader to put together a list of supplies they have and supplies they need, and we’ll use these extra funds to make sure we buy the best supplies we can at the best prices we can, and just move forward.
“The earth and stone ingenairii claim they can help with the excavation of the site for the stables and the construction of the structure. Schedule Tarpa as the last officer I fence with tomorrow morning, so that she and I can talk about the site before I start working with the bodyguard candidates,” Alec added.
Mortis left the office, and Alec sat back to consider what else to do. He went over the scheduling of the bodyguards while his mind dwelt on Cassie. He knew they both would feel tense when he got home, and he felt loathe to go back and face that unhappiness.
Alec stood up and left the building, bidding Mortis goodbye until tomorrow. He walked past the stable site, now a partially removed pile of debris from the old warehouse, and continued out of the palace grounds and off the island. He returned to Bakers Street and stopped at his front door, took a deep breath, then turned the handle and walked in. Back in the kitchen he found Ellen working with a woman he didn’t know.
“Alec, this is Suzer, who will be our extra help for a while. This is Alec, master of the house,” Ellen introduced them. Alec welcomed her to the household, then went upstairs to the second floor. He ran into Streed, the stone ingenaire whose services had been promised earlier than afternoon, and Alec asked him and his earth ingenaire friend, Waln, to join him and Tarpa midmorning at the site so they could discuss with her how to use their abilities in the construction. At the front of the house he saw the door to Cassie and Bethany’s room closed. He walked up to the door and stood there, hearing the indistinct sounds of low voices talking inside.
After a moment of hesitation, Alec began to turn away, then stopped, knocked on the door, and entered. Inside were Bethany and Cassie, sitting on the floor, talking intently. Alec closed the door behind him. “Should I be here for this?” he asked.
“Sometimes girls need to talk about some things by themselves Alec,” Bethany said. “Let us be and I’ll talk to you later, okay?” she said in a reserved voice that Alec could not read. Cassie refused to look at him.
Alec walked to the door. “I hope everything goes well,” he said, and left the room. He felt slightly relieved that whatever was being said seemed to be passing in a calm manner so far. Shaking his head, Alec mounted the stairs to the third floor. Up there, he passed two rooms with chattering apprentices and entered his own room, where he laid back on his bed and closed his eyes. Alternately his mind wandered among concerns about Cassie and Bethany, hope for the cavalry project that would start with Imelda’s departure the day after tomorrow, and puzzlement over how to protect Natha’s ships from probable piracy. Tomorrow he’d ask Tarkas for schedules of the next few water barges going down river and consider what options he had; maybe an answer would come.
He heard the door to his room close, and then felt his bed sag as Bethany laid down beside him. “Cassie is in a lot of pain, and feels a great deal of confusion, Alec,” she said.
“I know she does,” Alec said, putting an arm out and around the water apprentice. “I wish, I wish so much that there was something that would comfort her. There are things in my soul, probably everyone feels the same, that I never want to share. And then it happened that Cassie was able to go and see all the junk, all the dark things that I don’t want anyone to know about.” He fell silent.
“How do you feel?” he asked Bethany.
“Alec, I come from a family with two sisters. We were jealous of one another’s boyfriends all the time, but we still loved one another. As an apprentice living with others on Ingenairii’ Hill, I had a few instances where I liked someone else, or someone else liked my beau of the moment, and we lived with the feelings,” Bethany said.
“That doesn’t quite directly answer my question,” Alec said.
“Cassie told me she saw your feelings for me, and I know that in a way you’re keeping those feelings under wraps as well. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a woman in the world you wouldn’t fall in love with if given half a chance!” Bethany smiled, hoping to coax a smile from her troubled friend.
“I’m kidding Alec. You as much as had a spiritual ingenaire rooting around in your soul this afternoon in the way Cassie was able to see your feelings, and I know that’s not fair to you,” Bethany continued evenly.
I feel a little hurt, and a little happy, and a little sad,” she replied. “I always knew that you felt very much in love with Cassie, but I never knew that you felt desire as well, as Cassie described it to me. Maybe that’s something you can’t help. But Cassie said you put your love for Noranda above your love for her or me, and I respect that. I feel sad that Cassie has grown so upset, but in a way it’s the first time for her to have this jealousy, and like I said, we’ve all lived with it as part of regular life, and I think most of us have. Poor Cassie was just so sheltered from society and friends for so long… I’m sorry for her, and for you.
“I told her pretty much the same things I just told you about how jealousy and love for someone else are natural and everyday feelings. They happen all the time for everyone. I think it gave her something to consider, and maybe calmed her down a little.”
“What do you feel Alec?” she asked,
rolling up and over so that she rested on him, chest to chest, looking down into his face.
“I feel glad we’re having this talk,” Alec said. “I feel very sorry to have this whole tangled event occur. It seems so unfair for such turmoil to come out of an effort to make something good happen; maybe it’s what we get for trying to reach beyond our abilities. What do you think; was I too arrogant?” he asked rhetorically. “I feel unhappy that I had to leave my soul open for Cassie to allow her to find its dark corners while I was giving her the ability to exercise her ingenaire powers. I can’t even describe all the feelings I have right now, but I’m glad you’re here and we’re talking about this.”
“Poor Alec,” Bethany said, raising a hand to brush his hair off his forehead. Alec raised his hand, letting it run up Bethany’s back to her head, then gently pulling her face down to his for a kiss.
“Bethany,” he said when the separated. “Are you happy with me?”
“No Alec, I never get to see you or be with you or know you as a person hardly. The Duke needs you, the traders need you, the ingenairii need you, the Guard needs you, Cassie needs you. I believe the whole Dominion needs you now. But I need you too,” she said, laying her head on his chest. “Yes, I’m happy that now while there is a chance for you to be with someone, you are spending it with me.”
“Bethany, what things do you do as a water ingenaire?” Alec asked as an idea came to him.
She looked at him, surprised by the change of topic. “Are you serious?” she asked.
“Yes. I’d like to know if there are things we could work on together, do together,” he told her.
Her face retained a puzzled look as she began to inventory her skills. “I do most of the things other water ingenairii do. I can control the flow of water. I can draw water, and locate water; we often are used to find wells for homes and villages. I can put pressure behind flowing water. If the air is moist, we can persuade it to give up rain to us. There are other more exotic things as well, but most of the work we do is covered by those main topics. What in the world could we do together?” she asked with curiosity.
“I only have vague ideas right now,” he told her. “But I hope something happens to make it possible for us to be together.”
“Let’s go downstairs and join the others for dinner,” Alec said, and waited for Bethany to climb off him. “Will Cassie be able to face me?” he asked.
“Maybe not tonight, but if she sleeps on it, I hope that in the morning there’ll be some rays of positive thinking. The poor girl is so sweet and pretty, she’ll have her pick of any man she wants,” Bethany said. “Except you, of course!”
Downstairs they found the kitchen full of people jockeying for an opportunity to receive a plateful of food. “Wait everyone,” Alec shouted, placing a temporary damper on the bustle in the kitchen. “While we’re all together like this, I’d like to ask if Appel will say a prayer of grace for us before we share this meal.”
Appel looked surprised, but quickly regained his composure and spoke a prayer of thanks, while all heads were bowed. Upon “amen” the chatter immediately resumed, and soon people with plates were dispersing throughout the house. Alec sat with the three air ingenairii, getting to know them during the meal, and then excused himself to return to his room and get a good night’s sleep. He fell asleep quickly, thinking of Cassie and Noranda and Bethany, and his germ of an idea for how to work with the latter.
Chapter 11 – Tools and Weapons
The next morning, after conversing with Colonel Ryder, Alec fenced with his officers again, noticing changes in their techniques and habits that revealed work on their part – they were correcting deficiencies and improving their skills. Tarpa joined the officers at Alec’s request and got a workout, along with suggestions from him on how to improve. “Let’s go meet the ingenairii at the stable site,” Alec suggested as they finished reviewing the match.
Streed and Waln were there, stamping their feet to stay warm in the morning chill. “Gentlemen, how did you propose to help us with our stable project?” Alec asked.
Waln, the earth apprentice, took the lead, explaining ways he could alternately soften and harden the earth to make excavation easier and help stabilize the site for constructing the foundations. “Once you get this rubble out of the way, I can make the soil easy enough to complete excavation within a day. Usually we work with the farmers to improve soil or stabilize erosion, but this is one of those ways to inventively put our skills to action.”
“Tarpa, if you have laborers here today, can you get the rest of this mess out of the way and start excavating?” Alec asked.
“It won’t be a problem,” she replied. “Waln, if we finish excavation tomorrow, how quickly can you then set the conditions right for us to begin to lay the foundation in?”
Waln considered it, turned and spoke quietly to Streed for a moment, then answered. “I think that if we get any sizable portion of the excavation done today, I can finish up everything I need tomorrow, and Streed could actually start following me around establishing foundations if you have stones here ready for him.”
Alec and Tarpa exchanged glances. “You could have the foundation started tomorrow?” Tarpa asked. “What type of stone do you need?”
“Whatever you have, I can make it work. If you’ve got some large pieces to help start, I can strengthen them and even consolidate smaller stones among them into a solid mass. Consolidation is harder work than just strengthening stone though, and takes longer to do,” the stone apprentice explained.
“Tarpa, why don’t you send Streed to a quarry and have him set up a delivery schedule for every couple of days of material to be delivered starting tomorrow?” Alec suggested. “Streed, when it comes to the smithy, will you be able to prepare the stone to withstand high temperatures around the forge, where the fire burns hottest?”
Streed assured Alec he could do so, and Alec left the threesome to talk among themselves as he returned to the armory. Inside were six Guard members who had been nominated to serve as part of the Duke’s bodyguard. Alec wanted to evaluate their skills to determine which were best able to handle a weapon to protect the Duke. They obediently lined up according to the schedule Mortis had arranged for their trials with Alec.
He stepped onto the mat, deciding to make them feel humble so they’d feel like they needed to stay on their toes, and began battling each aggressively, pleased with the good defenses they managed to provide before he found a weakness or mistake and beat them. He tried it again, using his right hand this time, and found four able to fight him to a virtual draw.
Alec put them through three more exercises, fighting each other, battling against uneven odds, and battling as teams, judging which were likely to be suitable to take a spot in the rotation of bodyguards.
At last he judged two women and one man were of the right caliber, and asked them to stay while he dismissed the others. The three fighters were told that they would be given assignments with the body guard starting tomorrow, and Alec had Mortis take them to spend the rest of the day following the Duke’s progress to observe their role and the places they would serve.
While Mortis was gone, Alec left the island and went down to Natha’s dockyard to visit Tarkas.
“I’d like to know the schedule of your water barges, if you don’t mind sharing it with me?” Alec asked Tarkas as they strolled through the docks observing the men and ships.
“What do you have in mind with such information?” Tarkas responded.
“I may consider putting guards on some of your ships, and I want to get an idea of when they depart and where they go and how often they depart. That and more will let me judge what I can do for you; that plus a log of the past few ships, including the ones that went missing, so I can see about where you think they were when they disappeared,” Alec explained.
“That’s easy enough. I’ll get the papers sent over to you, but the problems occur between Three Forks and Frame, I can tell you that right now,” Tarkas
said. “You’ll have our schedules by the end of the day.”
Following a few more minutes of friendly talk, Alec left to return to the island, and had lunch with Imelda, to learn what she had planned for her trip to secure horses. “We should be gone ten days to a fortnight. We’re going the right time of year to get some young ones and the colts from last year just coming into their own. I’ll get enough two year olds for us to use right away, and then the younger ones for us to grow to age during the spring,” Imelda explained.
“What about gear?” Alec asked. “Will you find enough here in town, good quality gear that will last?”
“There are enough shops in town to produce fine materials that I’m not worried, although they may not have it all at once,” she replied.
“Go visit them today and place orders in advance so that it will be ready when you get back,” he suggested. Imelda nodded. “Who will you be taking with you, and are you prepared to drive Elcome further out into the Duchy for recruiting?” Alec said with a wink. “I don’t expect that you’ll bring him back with you, but if by some miracle he has some decent recruits, you may bring them back, as well as any that you find yourself.”
“I’ve got quite a few in mind, actually,” Imelda told him. “Girls like me out there come to an age where there’s nothing expected of them except to get married and have babies on the ranch. If I tell them they can get paid to ride a horse, shoot a bow and swing a sword, I expect I’ll have a half dozen ride back with me.”
“Have you heard anything from Inga, speaking of girls like you?” Alec asked as circumspectly as he could.
Imelda gave him a sideways glance. “Yes, I had a letter from her two days ago. They’d not heard about the attack on the palace at the time she wrote, but she had plenty to say about the lacertii attack, and how they’re responding to it. They’ve questioned the lacertii prisoners, and learned many things. That was about four regiments worth of troops they sent, and they were expected to come down and raid the farms and the outermost small villages. Inga says that Lewis believes the intent was to disrupt the harvest and depopulate the duchy’s eastern marches in advance of the spring,” Imelda said.
The Loss of Power: Goldenfields and Bondell Page 13
