Queen of the Sylphs (23 page)

“Uh, I don’t know.”

Solie eyed Heyou and cupped his cheek with one hand. “Make sure someone tells him. Someone . . . kind.”

“What, you don’t want us to shout it down the chimney?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I promise we won’t laugh much.”

When Solie shot him a look, he grinned. “Ass,” she said.

Lizzy and Ril’s cottage was a tiny thing only twenty feet wide, formed of swirling stone with a thatched roof. The windows were round and the door made of dark wood. Dillon stood outside, in human shape for once and looking moody.

“How’s Moreena doing?” Solie asked.

Dillon shrugged and bowed. “Good. Blue’s watching her. Mace said to tell you he and Claw went to look over the corpse’s place.”

“Right.” Solie looked at Heyou. “Can I at least
suggest
the lot of you show a little compassion?”

“You can always suggest,” Heyou replied. “Considering he tried to kill our hive mate, I’d suggest you make it an order.”

Dillon opened the door. Solie rolled her eyes and went inside.

The cottage was a single room, its wooden floor covered by a patterned rug. A small couch was placed near the front, while a dresser was turned lengthwise and pushed against the back wall to create two separate living spaces, one with a small table and the other featuring a double bed. Lizzy and Leon sat on wooden chairs pulled up by the bed. Ril was mostly buried under the covers.

The two Petrules looked up as she entered, and Solie held open her arms. Lizzy hurried toward her. The young woman hugged her warmly before she stepped back.

“Ril’s messed up. Somehow, Justin has him thinking that he’s supposed to drink any energy but ours. Father doesn’t want to risk making it worse. We don’t know what else was done to him.”

“Doesn’t Ril know?”

“No. He doesn’t remember.”

Solie approached the bed. “How is he?” she whispered to Leon.

“I’m fine,” Ril said loudly. He pushed the bedcovers back and sat up, jabbing a finger at his master. “He won’t let me up. I’m not sick.” He put a hand against his middle and made a face. “Maybe a little queasy in the stomach is all.”

“You don’t have a stomach,” Heyou pointed out. Ril glared.

“We think Justin ordered him to drink the wrong energy and then to forget about being ordered to do so,” Leon said.

Ril protested. “He didn’t!”

“Well, I want to be sure anything Justin told him to do is completely gone,” Leon said.

“Hey, Justin’s dead,” Heyou argued. “Any order he gave, Ril can just ignore now.”

“Obviously he’s not,” Leon shot back. “Justin set him up so that he doesn’t even know he’s obeying an order.”

The chancellor’s expression was flat, but thanks to the battlers Solie could tell how utterly furious he was. Even when Alcor’s battle sylphs were attacking, Solie hadn’t felt him so angry. Or so frightened. He had no idea what had been done to Ril, and he had been paired with the sylph for over twenty years. She understood the intensity of such a bond.

Solie waddled heavily over to the bed, and Ril moved his legs so that she could sit down. He looked at her with exasperation before finally lowering his eyes in respect.

She smiled reassuringly and took a deep breath. “Ril, what did Justin order you to do tonight?”

“Nothing.”

She waited for him to look up at her and focused. “Ril, what did Justin order you to do tonight?”

Solie wasn’t a sylph. Even so, after six years as their queen she’d learned a lot. She still used Mace to help bond sylphs to new masters, but she didn’t need that so much anymore, and she certainly didn’t need it now, for this. She focused, and the force of her will swept irresistibly through Ril. He had other masters, more masters than any other sylph in the Valley, but, human or not, she was queen. He had no choice but to obey her first if possible.

Ril’s eyes widened, locked on hers. “I . . . I . . . I don’t remember.”

“Tell me what Justin told you to do tonight.”

He shuddered. “I don’t remember!”

“Solie,” Leon cautioned.

Solie frowned. If Ril remembered, he would have told her; she could feel how badly he wanted to obey. That made their enemy’s plan sneaky but really smart. Ril couldn’t tell anyone what had been done to him if he couldn’t recall it. So, she’d have to get around that somehow.

For the moment she could only tell how hungry he was. Leon’s direct order was holding him back from poisoning himself again.

“Ril,” she said, making her voice as firm as she possibly could. “You will feed only from your masters or your queen. You will never feed from any other source again, no matter who orders you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said.

He sounded so unsure that she had to smile. “Drink some of Leon and Lizzy’s energy, Ril. I promise it won’t poison you.”

The battler frowned, but his eyes half lidded as he drew in energy from the Petrules. She felt his surprise and confusion, but he immediately gained strength.

“What orders has Justin given you before this?” Solie asked.

“He told me to die,” Ril answered, distracted.

Lizzy shrieked. “WHAT?”

Leon shushed his daughter, his face red, while Solie shook her head, silently glad that Justin was dead if he was willing to order something so awful. Heyou smirked, picking up on her anger.

“You’re still alive,” she pointed out to Ril.

“He left the how and when open,” the battler explained. Shrugging, he added, “I figured I’d die someday, so I’d obey him then.”

Solie laughed. Clever. “Anything else?”

“I really don’t remember.”

Heyou piped up. “Why don’t you just order him to ignore anything Justin told him to do?”

Solie looked up. “That’s the whole problem. How can he know what he’s not supposed to do when he doesn’t know when he’s doing something he was told?”

Heyou looked taken aback. “Oh. Uh.
Huh?
”

“Dammit,” Leon muttered. “Maybe something else? Maybe some sort of overall order not to do anything to hurt himself?”

Lizzy moaned, staring at her hands. “I can’t believe Justin did this. I mean, did he really think he could make me love him by killing Ril?”

Her father put an arm around her while Ril watched worriedly.

Heyou eyed Lizzy as well, scratching his head, but then he paused, listening. A moment later he had Solie around the waist and was throwing her backward, shifting form to catch her in his mantle as he did.

Solie screamed, tumbling against solid darkness as the front door crashed open and a second cloud passed inside. Mace shifted to human form as he landed on the bed. His massive hand lashed out and locked around Ril’s throat, slamming him back against the headboard.

Lizzy shrieked.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Leon thundered.

“Claw found a diary at the boy’s. He ordered Ril to sabotage the warehouse, kill Rachel and Galway, murder those assassins, and try to kill Moreena.
My
master was next on the list.”

“I didn’t!” Ril gasped.

“He ordered him to forget,” Mace finished. “We don’t know what else he was told to do. The queen is in danger.”

Leon wore a belt knife. He had it out and against Mace’s throat. “Let him go.”

“That won’t hurt me.”

“Care to find out for sure?”

“Stop!” Solie shouted, emerging from Heyou. Awkwardly, she edged onto her feet, leaning on Heyou and keeping one hand on her belly. “Mace, don’t hurt him.”

“He’s a danger to you.”

“Sylphs don’t hurt queens.”

“Crazy ones do.”

Leon pressed his knife against Mace’s throat until the skin pushed inward, and the battler squinted at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Ril isn’t crazy.”

“Release him, Mace,” Solie ordered. “Leon, put the knife away.”

Mace slowly let go of Ril, and Leon stepped back, sheathing the knife. The two glared at each other while Ril sat up, watching Solie instead. Heyou stepped in front of her, watching him.

Solie sighed. “Ril, this is an order. No matter what you’ve been told, you will not harm me or the Widow Blackwell, or any other human in this Valley. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Leon spoke up. “He won’t be able to defend himself now.”

“Like you were ever planning to risk him in a fight again,” she snapped. Her back was starting to hurt, and the stress was making her tired. So was the late hour. She turned to Mace and asked, “Happy?”

“Happy enough,” he replied. “The hive is safe.”

It was. Solie turned away. Maybe now the more overprotective sylphs would calm down; she was tired of getting complaints from their beleaguered masters.

“I’d like to see this diary in the morning—and anything else you find.” She walked with Heyou toward the doorway, then stopped. “Where’s Claw?”

Mace paused, checking. “He went back to his master.”

“Oh.” Solie pictured Sala for a moment, whom she still didn’t like. She hadn’t seen Claw since Rachel died. Sometimes she wondered if he was avoiding her, but that didn’t make any sense, so she headed out the door and back toward home.

After about forty steps, Heyou took pity on her waddling gait. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her the rest of the way.

Claw walked slowly down the underground hive passageway and past several open rooms. With the sun down and their masters asleep, dozens of sylphs were assembled for classes, lectures given mostly in the mental speech they all shared. He peered in at the assembled sylphs, most of them in their elemental forms, only a few maintaining human appearance.

He missed being in these classes, missed sitting at the cramped little desk while Rachel taught them to read, or write, or to do all those things with numbers. He missed so many things, and his walk slowed to a shuffle. He began trembling.

Sala didn’t like it when he trembled. Maybe now she’d be pleased with him—though he certainly wasn’t pleased with himself. He’d killed that boy when she’d said to: before he could protest his innocence for all the crimes she wanted him blamed for. Then Claw had “found” the diary she’d written, detailing all of the things she’d actually done and ascribing them to Justin. He’d accomplished these things while avoiding the queen.

He continued on, passing another class he wasn’t allowed to join. He had really hoped Sala’s plan would fail, but its success was unsurprising. She was too good at the details.

With the threat to the hive dead, the sylphs would settle down and stop guarding their masters so obsessively. These classes would be three or four times this size, and Sala would be able to do whatever she wanted again. He didn’t know what she wanted, not entirely. He didn’t want to. He just wished he could be ordered to forget, like Ril or Wat. Wat didn’t have to remember a thing, and he didn’t shake when he was in the presence of his master. He didn’t have to stay celibate, either, though Claw was glad of that aspect. For all his instinctive nature, he didn’t want Sala touching him. He was lucky that she preferred Wat.

Of course, that just made him even gladder for Wat that Wat never remembered.

He reached her apartment, the absolute last place he wanted to be, and went inside. Sala sat primly in a chair, sewing a skirt for herself.

“Tell me.”

Claw closed the door and leaned against it. “The boy gave the order you wanted. Ril’s pain alerted the hive, and I killed the boy before anyone could question him. Then I planted the diary. Ril and Justin took the blame for everything.”

“Did they kill him?”

Claw shuddered but forced himself to stop before she noticed. “Ril? No.”

Sala shrugged. “Pity. Spend time with the others tomorrow, encourage them to relax and leave their masters alone again.”

He didn’t want to know why. Dismissed, he shuffled into the next room and shut the door, wanting to lock it but not daring. Going to the corner farthest from the bed, he slid down and laid his head on his knees, dreaming yet again that Rachel hadn’t died—or better yet, that he’d managed to die with her.

Sala felt Claw’s misery, and she tried to put it out of her mind. It wasn’t easy. His emotions weren’t anything he could entirely banish, though he hid them well from other sylphs. That was something, but she’d be much happier if he could also hide them from her. He couldn’t. Apparently that little flaw was why enslaved battlers hit their masters with a constant aura of hate. Sala would have preferred hate, but such an aura would have brought her far too much attention.

His emotions kept her from sleeping with him. Wat was better for that, anyway, with the added bonus that knowing she slept with Wat instead of him had to be driving Claw mad. Sala certainly hoped so. She’d been investing quite a lot of time in making him insane, and he was being far more resistant than she’d expected. She wasn’t entirely sure she needed him crazy, but it seemed better to be safe than sorry.

Justin had certainly turned out well, despite the limited amount of time she’d had to work on him. His public hatred for Ril had made him a perfect scapegoat.

Sala knew she’d been lucky. She hadn’t expected the battle sylphs to react the way they had to the deaths and accidents she’d arranged. Killing Rachel to get Claw had made the battlers move closer to their masters. Killing Galway to isolate Solie had made them even more protective. The attempt on Moreena had made them impenetrable. Single-minded creatures. She would never get a chance to kill Solie if she hadn’t given some other focus for their fear. Even so, nothing was working out the way she planned.

Despite her attempts to become Solie’s friend, the woman didn’t trust her. Somehow she had better instincts than her battlers. Hence Sala’s work to make Claw crazy. If Sala couldn’t kill Solie herself, Claw would. So long as he could mate with her afterward, it didn’t matter how insane he was. Once would be enough to make her queen. After that, she likely wouldn’t need him.

This time, everything was going to work out. She wouldn’t be impatient, not like she’d been in Yed. She should have waited longer to kill that magistrate, used a method other than poison, been more discreet in her rearrangement of his finances so that everything went to Gabralina. She’d planned to inherit after Gabralina met with her own accident, but the magistrate’s family was smarter than she’d hoped, and she supposed that she really had been sloppy.