by Sharon Green
Vallant noticed that Meerk’s glance went to Tamrissa when he mentioned the risk, which explained the man’s blind spot. His solution just wasn’t practical, and he needed to be told that as quickly as possible.
“Sittin’ around waitin’ for them to die is something we can’t afford to do,” he said, interrupting enthusiastic comments from Meerk’s friend Biblow. “Not at this stage of the game.”
“Why not?” Meerk snapped, turning quickly to face Vallant. “Because you don’t like the idea? Or maybe it’s just because you didn’t think of it first.”
“Neither,” Vallant replied, feeling himself stiffen in response to the man’s attitude. “It may have escaped your notice, but they’rethe legitimately Seated authority even if they got to be Seated by cheatin’. If we just sit around and wait for them to die, the power they represent reverts right back to the nobility. Legally it’s still their place to arrange for a new Blendin’, and they’ll rally behind the last remainin’ member of the old Blendin’ to give themselves time to take control again. If we then walk in and try to brush them aside, we’ll be the ones breakin’ the law.”
“I’m afraid Vallant is right,” Jovvi said as Meerk began to growl wordlessly. “Right now we’rein the midst of a serious social upheaval, with most of the people in the city on our side. That sort of atmosphere tends to dissipate in the face of inaction, and the needs of everyday life will take precedence again. The nobility will be able to go after everyone a few at a time, forcing them back into their old habits and ways. At that point we’ll have to choose between taking over by force against more than the Seated Five, and running away again. Don’t forget that we’ve not only broken the law by Blending ourselves, but we’ve taught others how to do it.”
“And don’t believe for a moment that the nobility can’t regain the standing it used to have,” Rion put in in agreement, drawing Meerk’s dagger stare. “A private guard force isn’t hard to come by when you have the gold to pay out, and Gan Garee isn’t the only city in the empire. I’m sure many of those who have left mean to return with such a force, and if everything isn’t settled by then we’ll have to take them over or destroy them. Very frankly I don’t care for either option.”
“And if we let them die instead of defeating them, the rumor of their cheating will always stay that, just a rumor,” Tamrissa said, speaking more gently than the others had. “After that it won’t matter who we defeat, we won’t have defeated the people the nobility have claimed are the stronger Blending. Even if we manage to be Seated, there will always be people around who believe we stole our place rather than earned it.”
“Which in turn will mean we’ll have to spend a lot of our time fighting off attempts by people to steal the place themselves,” Lorand put in, clearly in agreement. “We won’t be suppressing the knowledge about Blending again, so they’ll decide that if we did it, they can do the same. And people will feel free to argue anything we happen to suggest, because we aren’t the ‘real’ authority in charge. Personally, I don’t care for any part of that.”
“You’reall doing nothing but making excuses,” Meerk bit out harshly, glaring around at them. “You think that if one of you says something, all the others have to support that something. But in this instance it’s insane, when you can have everything you want just by sitting back and waiting. If the nobility brings in more guardsmen, why not just take them over? If they try to take control of the Seating process again, simply don’t allow it. And if someone challenges you or refuses to do as you say, just have them arrested. When you’rethe leaders of an effort like this, you can do anything you damned well please without anyone saying you can’t. Don’t all those High talent link groups count for anything?”
“Those High talent link groups are made up of people, who count for everything,” Jovvi said, just a touch more sharply than she’d spoken before. “They aren’t here as tools to be used to Seat absolute despots, they’rehere for the same reason we are: to end that sort of thing. It’s pointless for everyone to go through all the trouble they have just to substitute one set of tyrants for another. You’rethinking with your emotions rather than your mind, Alsin, and it’s doing you not the least credit. Tamrissa can’t be protected by refusing to face reality.”
“So that’s it,” Vallant growled, putting his teacup aside to get to his feet. “As long as you’rebusy worryin’ about Tamrissa, everybody else in the world can go hang. For your information, that woman is better able to take care of herself than you’ll ever be, and when you sit around whinin’ and tryin’ to protect her all you’redoin’ is insultin’ her. She doesn’t need protectin’, as if she were some helpless female off the streets!”
“You would think that, because you don’t have the stones to protect her,” Meerk returned in the same sort of growl, turning now to face Vallant completely. “When you love someone as much as I love her, you can’t help but worry over her safety. And when some damned fool tries to put her into danger, you can’t do anything but step in and tell him to back off. Maybe your life isn’t worth anything, but hers is!”
“Yes, her life is worth more than mine, but you’renot talkin’ about love, you’retalkin’ about possession,” Vallant snapped back, moving forward a bit just the way Meerk was doing. “She’s not so stupid that she doesn’t know how dangerous somethin’ can be, but she’s entitled to make her own decision about it. You steppin’ in says you’retryin’ to make the decision for her, to force her to do things your way. If you loved her the way I do, you’d let her live her own life as she sees fit even if it eats out all of your insides with worry. As a human bein’ she’s entitled to that, whether you like it or not!”
“What has like got to do with survival?” Meerk demanded, now only a step or so away. “I’d rather have her alive and unhappy, than fully satisfied and dead. Only a pitiful excuse for a man would see it any other way.”
“She’s already been through alive and unhappy, and I’d never let somethin’ like that happen to her again,” Vallant returned, his tone now very flat. “And if I’m such a pitiful excuse for a man, what are you waitin’ for? Show me how big a man you are.”
Meerk showed his teeth in a feral grin, the expression saying he’d been waiting just as long as Vallant had for something like this to finally happen. Vallant had no need to reach for the power because he was no longer able to release it, so he simply got a tighter grip on it and extended the fingers of his talent toward Meerk. The other man was undoubtedly doing the same with his own talent, and who struck first would certainly count toward eventual victory. Vallant had no intentions of killing the fool, only of teaching him just how big a fool he was, but his talent suddenly … ran into a wall, so to speak. Meerk stood no more than three feet away, but Vallant found it impossible to reach him.
“That’s right, we’reblocking both your talents,” Jovvi said as Meerk’s face twisted into an expression of frustrated rage. “The rest of us think you’reboth idiots for constantly pushing at each other, but if this is what you want we won’t try to deny it to you. We just won’t let you do it with magic, so if you’regoing to fight you’ll have to do it like the two little boys you are.”
Physically, Vallant knew she meant, since it took a while for children to have control over their talents. But that was perfectly all right with him, as the son of a wealthy owner of trading ships often found himself defending against the crime of what family he’d been born into. Meerk, too, seemed to have the same experience in his past, as he put his hands up in a way that said he knew what he was doing. Vallant considered that marvelous, since he hated the idea of beating up on the helpless.
And, happily, Meerk was far from helpless. He jabbed at Vallant with his right fist, expecting to connect with Vallant’s face, but that hadn’t happened often. Vallant tended to move too fast, and his own fist smashed into Meerk’s face with satisfying strength. Meerk stumbled back, momentarily off balance, but a moment later he was right back in the fight.
It
took an incredibly long time before the fight was over, and by then Vallant’s fury was long since faded. Meerk relied on brute strength rather than any sort of technique, and he simply kept throwing punches at Vallant no matter how many times he missed. He actually did connect two or three times, but Vallant knew how to take a punch without folding—a skill often acquired by someone who has worked his way up to captaining a ship. Shaking off the pain of the blow with a sharp movement of his head seemed to also shake Meerk, and when Vallant did it for the third time, Meerk’s face grayed a bit.
Not long after that, Vallant noticed that Meerk was doing more stumbling than moving, more panting than breathing evenly. The man was close to the end of his strength, so Vallant hesitated a moment and then stepped back.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve already proved whatever it was I intended to,” Vallant said as he watched Meerk drag in deep draughts of air. “Is there any reason to keep goin’ on with this?”
The other man seemed about to refuse to stop the fight, but then he apparently noticed the difference in their conditions. He stared at Vallant for a moment, pain and humiliation and desolation in his eyes, and then he turned and stumbled out of the room. Jovvi gave Vallant a small smile and nod of approval before hurrying out after Meerk, and then Lorand and Rion and Naran were surrounding Vallant.
“Sit down and let me do something about that cut on your cheek,” Lorand ordered in a no nonsense tone as he gestured to a nearby chair. “And I hope you two finally have all that out of your systems.”
“We finally realized that you had to be given the chance to get it out of your systems,” Rion said, his arm around Naran as usual. “My lady kept worrying about the confrontation which refused to become less of a probability, a confrontation in which one of you would have been seriously hurt if not killed. We finally realized that that was so only if you both used your talents, so we joined together with our link groups to keep the fight physical. Are you finally over it?”
“Speakin’ for myself, I’d hate to go through that again,” Vallant said, feeling the gentle touch of Lorand’s talent against the cut on his face. “The man had no chance against me, and fightin’ someone like that makes you feel as though you’repickin’ on the helpless.”
“How interesting,” another voice said, and Tamrissa appeared between Rion and Lorand. “You consider Alsin helpless, but I’m no longer a candidate for that category. Now, when it’s altogether too late, you finally come around to the proper way of thinking. You might like to know, Dom Ro, that I no longer dislike you. Now I hate every inch of you, and I’m never going to speak to you again!”
And with that she turned and marched out of the room, the set of her shoulders and angle of her head shouting out her anger. Vallant’s cheek began to sting from whatever Lorand was doing to it, but Vallant barely noticed. Something inside him had begun an unexpected shift, and his own anger kept his gaze on Tamrissa until she disappeared from sight. This time he had no clear idea of how the woman had challenged him, but he was as certain as possible that she had.
And that something inside him was on the verge of letting him answer her challenge, in the way he most wanted to…
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kambil sat quietly and watched as the guardsman said nervously to Delin, “Yes, that’s right, Excellence, the Commandant feels certain that the fugitives have returned to the city. Two of our patrol groups haven’t reported back, and a third was destroyed completely. The Commandant is now in the process of adding all our remaining forces to the palace contingent, which means they’ll have to go through us before they can reach you.”
“Why doesn’t that comfort me?” Delin demanded acidly, glaring at the guardsman. “And if the Commandant was so certain that his new plan would work, why didn’t he come himself to tell us about it?”
“As I said, Excellence, the Commandant sends his regrets,” the man mumbled, stuttering a bit with fright. “H-he’s right in the middle of setting up more guard posts, and means to come in person as soon as everything is done to his satisfaction.”
“Does that mean he intends to explain why those miserable peasants were allowed to get back into the city in the first place?” Delin asked much too brightly, which frightened the man even more. “Tell him I’m certainly looking forward to hearing that explanation, and the sooner the better. And also tell him that if he isn’t here within the hour, he needn’t bother coming at all. Or even bother worrying about what to do with the rest of his life, as he won’t have a life to worry about! Now get out of my sight!”
The guardsman performed the fastest bow-while—moving Kambil had ever seen, getting himself to the door and out of it even before he’d straightened. Bron, Selendi, and Homin, all back fully under control—as Bron had been since the last session Kambil had had with him—were just as amused as Kambil was, leaving only Delin to rant and rage at the closed and empty doorway.
“They’reall a bunch of incompetent fools!” Delin shouted, waving a fist at the closed door. “They were given just one thing to do, but obviously it was too far beyond their ability. Just what do they think they’rearound for?”
“Actually, I believe they’rewondering the same thing about us,” Kambil said, able to answer the rhetorical question when he hadn’t been allowed to comment at any other time. “You’regetting so frantic about all this, you’redoing nothing but confirming the rumors about our having stolen the Throne.”
“And you didn’t get frantic?” Delin demanded, rounding on Kambil in his rage. “I seem to recall someone determined to avoid facing those miserable peasants again, and it wasn’t me. Surely you haven’t changed your mind?”
“Now that they’rehere, we may not have the choice,” Kambil said, and this time he would have stayed silent if he could have. “That message you just sent to the Commandant of the guard—I expect the man will take your advice and not show up at all. He’ll pick a direction and start to run, relying on those interlopers to solve his problem for him, and the Highest Aspect alone knows how many guardsmen will go with him. You’ve just managed to weaken our protection more than the interlopers have.”
“In his position, that’s what I would do,” Homin said in support as Delin began to snarl out his disagreement. “He was uncertain to begin with and so sent one of his men to test the waters, and you told the man of your intention to drown him in them. He’d be a fool to do anything but run.”
“And it’s not as if we’ve given him any help with what we asked him to do,” Bron pointed out calmly. “We should have gone out as a full Blending and thrown those peasants back into line, but you refused to do that. The man simply doesn’t have a large enough force to cope with what’s happening, but instead of supporting him you blamed him for not doing the impossible. So what do you expect we’ll do now?”
“We’ll do whatever we have to to win,” Delin ground out, his stare at each of them individually filled with the obsession of the extremely unstable. “I don’t care what that happens to be or how many people have to die, but we are going to win. The only thing we won’t be doing is Blending.”
“How can you continue to insist on that?” Selendi asked with exasperation, shaking her head a bit at him. “They’ll be using their Blending, they’d be fools not to, so we won’t stand a chance against them. We stand little enough chance Blended, but we have learned a few tricks they don’t know yet. That knowledge could conceivably win the thing for us.”
“And then again it may not,” Delin countered, calmer now. “It may interest you to know that Kambil disagrees with you about their using their Blending if we don’t Blend. Our esteemed Spirit magic user feels that they have what they consider a sense of honor, and they won’t take undue advantage of an opponent. As a Blending they’restronger than we are, but that may not be true on an individual basis. We’ll each face our opposite number, and if necessary we’ll cheat to win. Once they’redead, the rest of the peasants won’t have the nerve to mention the word ‘usurpers
’ again. And there’s another reason why we won’t Blend.”
“What reason is that, Delin?” Bron asked, his tone no more than curious. “I’d like to know why you refuse to use our greatest, most effective weapon.”
“As if you don’t already know,” Delin replied, scoffing at all of them. “Am I supposed to overlook the fact that I’ve allowed Kambil to regain control over the three of you? He can’t do anything to me directly and by himself, but in the Blending you’refour against my one. Overwhelming me would be no trouble at all, and then Kambil would be free and I’d be his slave again. Thank you very much, but I prefer being the master to the slave.”
Kambil very much wanted to use a smooth, persuasive argument on Delin and talk him out of his stance, but he hadn’t been allowed the option to do that. Frustration flared high in Kambil, furious frustration in that he had expected Delin to have overlooked the fact that the others were back under his control. If they could have Blended just one time, his talent could have freed him as Delin’s talent had been unable to do in the same circumstance. He’d expected Delin to look at the situation from his narrow, personal point of view as usual, but Delin hadn’t obliged.
“So that’s the sum total of your plan to see that we survive this?” Selendi asked Delin, the words still tart. “We face them individually and cheat? What if we can’t find a way to cheat?”
“Thanks to your friend Rimen Howser, we already have one way,” Delin reminded her. “Those hostages he gathered are all here in the palace, so we’ll certainly make use of them. And by the way, I gave him the reward he kept hinting he was due—only not the one he expected. I appointed him my personal envoy, and told him he would immediately be given the status of High Lord if he came back with the gold my peasant tenants are so late in sending. He took a small contingent of guardsmen and left the palace, but that was yesterday. If he isn’t back by tomorrow, I might have to start worrying about him.”
