Steel Victory (Steel Empire Book 1) (16 page)

“So maybe the Humanists aren’t that much of a coincidence,” Lorus said. “Does Emily Fabbri have any Roman blood in her?”

“Fabbri is a Roman name,” Lena said. “And Emily is a derivative of Emilia. Evidence points to it.”

“No,” Victory said. She had lived in this city for a hundred years. Even after brushing aside those memories of battle, the enormous weight of her age still settled on her shoulders. “Let’s not go down that road, condemning people because of their heritage. Especially not based on such a flimsy excuse as a name. Limani has been open to settlers from either empire for hundreds of years, and the families are so intermingled it would be pointless. We’re not going to start discriminating now.”

“Regardless of the fact that’s exactly what they’re doing to us?” Tristan said.

“There’s a difference between taking the higher moral ground and getting anything done,” Max said. “Much as I’d like for both to be possible.”

“So we need to figure out how far we’re willing to go,” Victory said.

Lorus toasted the room with his coffee mug. “And how far we’ll have to push everyone else along with us.”

Toria’s decision to stay in Max’s office instead of taking a bed in one of the Hall’s guestrooms might have been the wrong one. The couch might be comfortable enough for sitting or lounging on, but any real sleep would be impossible.

Then she remembered the lumpy mattresses in the guestrooms. She once accused Max of getting them from a trash bin, and he never did argue the point with her.

But tonight Max gave her a pillow and tucked her under a warm blanket with orders to yell if she needed anything. The level of his concern almost shocked her, but she and Kane were Limani’s treasured warrior-mage pair. Max had been itching to declare them official mercenaries since high school, but Victory forbade it, claiming they needed more experience first. But maybe he didn’t have any ulterior motives—in his own way, he did care for them.

Toria reached out with her mind to touch Kane’s presence. But she couldn’t do more than verify that his spark of life still burned before the wave of black washed across her field of view and spikes of pain jolted through her brain.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain and pressed her face into the pillow, riding out the throbbing in her head. When it receded, she made the conscious effort to relax her tensed muscles and lay breathing hard. “Damn it all to hell,” she said into her pillow.

“That’s no way for a lady to speak.”

Toria popped her eyes open to see an elderly gentleman standing in the open doorway of Max’s office, hands in front of him resting on the head of a cane. He dressed like he came straight from the stage, in old-fashioned black breeches and a dark emerald tunic over a shirt of a lighter green. He radiated age and power, but the face was unlined. She didn’t know why she had thought he was old, unless it was just the cane that threw her off.

The man gestured toward the couch on the opposite side of Toria. “May I come in?”

“Yeah, please.” The pale hand with long tapered fingers sparked recognition and she knew this man was an elf, though the first she’d seen with such short hair. He kept it cropped close to his head, covering the ears that would have otherwise given him right away. “Sorry, I’m not usually this rude.”

Toria braced an arm beneath her and made to rise, but the man said, “Please, remain comfortable. I understand that you’ve been through quite an ordeal.” Before taking a seat, he held his hand out to her. “I am Zerandan. My granddaughter Daliana asked me to meet with you.”

If Daliana was his granddaughter, Zerandan was one of the oldest elves Toria had ever met. That made her previous rudeness even more inexcusable. She dredged her elven manners out of the back of her brain, where she stored them next to her old piano lessons and how to write in cursive. While she shook his hand, she said, “It is my pleasure to meet you, Zerandan, grandfather of Daliana, friend of my mother. I am Torialanthas Connor, daughter of Victory, friend of your granddaughter.” She was lucky the connection was so simple. Anything more would have been tough to wade through right now.

A glint of humor flashed in his green eyes. “Nicely done, child,” he said, settling into his seat across from her. “You go by Toria, I believe?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Ah yes, the foundling child of the Wasteland,” Zerandan said. “Your adoption was quite the scandal, you know. That was fifteen years ago?”

“Yes, sir,” Toria said again. “Something like that.” She hoped he hadn’t come to reminisce about a past she had just sketchy memories of. She sensed magic around him, almost leaking out of his pores. But when she opened her senses to investigate further, the spikes were there again, driving through her head.

When she managed to open her eyes after this latest wave of pain passed, she found Zerandan’s eyes mere inches from her own. He knelt on the ground by her couch, cane discarded, two of his fingers resting feather-light on her upraised cheek. “Don’t do that again.” The humor left Zerandan’s voice, replaced by concern. “At least not until I tell you to.”

This time she couldn’t even manage a “Yes, sir.” Toria nodded once. She rubbed away the tracks of tears leading from her eyes to the pillow.

“How often does this happen?”

He was all business now, the paternal figure replaced with a mage who must equal Asaron in experience of years. Maybe more. “Every time I try to use magic. No, every time I even try to actively sense magic.”

“And which were you doing just now?”

His fingers remained on her cheek, and she felt his power pressing against her own. She shied away from it but didn’t try to block him out. “You felt like magic. It’s habit to check. One of those things you do.”

“One of those things.” Zerandan closed his eyes, but humor was still evident in his voice. “Yes, I see. So. Tell me exactly what you were doing when this feeling first occurred.”

Toria sketched out the events of the brief battle with the Roman soldiers, concluding with feeling the backlash of the power she’d poured into Kane and passing out on the riverbank. “But I don’t think this is a backlash headache. I thought it was, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve had them before, and this is different, somehow.”

“You tried to harness the power of a river, child.” His eyes opened again, the amusement back in place. “You thought this would be a normal backlash headache?”

“But those are usually constant pain for a few hours,” Toria said. “Like when I woke up, I had a bad headache, but then it passed. Right now I’m fine unless I actually try to do something.”

“Like contact your partner?”

“Exactly.” Wait a second. “How did you know I’ve been trying to do that?”

“I could see it.” Without bothering to explain his particular insight any further, Zerandan continued, “I have had some experience with warrior-mage pairs over the years. They don’t do well apart.”

“We manage okay,” Toria said.

“Since you’ve bonded, what’s the longest the two of you have been separated? By both distance and time.”

Zerandan’s eyes bored into her, and Toria avoided his stare by looking up at Max’s office ceiling. It was an old building—there was some water damage in one of the corners. “Three days? Well, a weekend, I guess, when I went camping with Dad, and Kane couldn’t miss play rehearsal. We did almost break the partnership in high school, but we were still in school together all day, so the distance bit doesn’t really count.”

“Do you know what happens when warrior-mages are separated for too long?” Zerandan removed his fingers and retrieved his cane. His eyes never left her while he pushed himself to his feet.

That didn’t sound good. “It’s never been a problem for us. And there haven’t been any warrior-mages in Limani in so long. The only other person I know who’s met a pair is Mama, and she never mentioned anything bad to me,” Toria said. “So I don’t know, sir.” She braced herself for bad news.

“Neither do I, as a matter of fact,” Zerandan said, dropping down onto the couch behind him. “Nothing bad, I hope.”

Toria released the breath she’d been holding. Age must make you crazy. This reminded her of the pranks Asaron played. “Well, do you know what’s wrong with me?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’ve scanned you lightly, but I wanted to warn you before I went any deeper. This might not be a purely internal problem.”

Magical theory was Kane’s department, but Toria could still put the pieces together. “You think I might have been cursed?”

“You said you didn’t know why the Romans left you behind?”

“Mama thinks it was a warning,” Toria said. “Rome is a really patriarchal society. It makes sense they would leave behind the useless girl and take the two men who are more valuable hostages, who they might get ransom for.”

“Were any of the group who attacked you mages?” Zerandan said.

“I don’t know,” Toria said. She thought back, feeling the breeze of the arrow brushing past her once more. “They shot at me and were fighting Kane and Asaron with swords and hand-to-hand. Wouldn’t any mages have used magic against us? Especially since they were the attackers and would have had time to plan spells or effects against us.”

“This is a moot point,” Zerandan said. “There’s no way to know for sure. The real question becomes, will the proximity of someone else’s magic give you the same pain?”

“Well, unless I’ve suddenly developed an allergy to magic, I guess that would be a pretty good test of whether I’ve been cursed or whether this really is some insanely strong form of backlash headache.”

“Will you allow me to do a deeper scan of your magic?” Zerandan balanced the cane against the couch, resting his elbows on his knees. “It can be a personal experience for the person at the receiving end. You’ll have to completely lower your shields for me.”

She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d done that. Could she even bring herself to do it for a strange mage, even if he was an elf and Daliana’s grandfather?

But she needed to find out what was wrong with her. It might not be an easy fix, but the sooner she found out what was going on, the better. “Let’s do it.”

“I still vote to be rid of the Humanists.” Bethany raised her chin in defiance to those around her. “Get free of one problem so we can focus on what might, I don’t know, wipe us all out.”

Victory saw that Genevieve looked ready to launch herself out of her seat, inching to the edge of the couch but restrained by Tristan’s gentle touch on her arm. Both of them seemed to be taking turns being the silent voice of reason. Better than either of them starting an actual fight. “I cannot believe you would advocate such a thing, lady.”

Bethany opened her mouth to retort, but Lorus beat her to it, waving her silent with a slice of his hand. “Bethany, I did not invite you here so you could tell us to kill people.”

This needed to stop before everyone got too wired. It looked like Victory wasn’t alone in her lack of sleep. “The problem,” she said, “is that Bethany’s idea is sound. It’s her method that’s flawed.”

“What are you talking about?” Tristan said. “The woman’s crazy.” He’d managed to pull Genevieve back onto the couch, and now both of them sat with hands gripped tight. Victory would have thought it charming except for the white knuckles indicating the death grip each had on the other.

“Question.” Max’s turn to head off an outburst from Bethany. “How many of us here have actual military experience?”

Victory raised her hand, along with Max. To her surprise, Lorus did, too.

Lorus shrugged when everyone looked at him askance. “Well, it depends on what you consider military experience. It was a long time ago, before I immigrated to Limani. A short time in the British Air Corp out of Eire. I never saw combat.”

“But you were still trained, and you must know the basic goal behind every fight,” Max said. “Victory, you’re in a swordfight. What do you watch? Your opponent’s blade?”

“Their eyes.” She’d never been much for formal fencing since the masks interfered with the specific part of Asaron’s training so ingrained in her. “A sword can feint in any direction. The eyes never lie.”

“Good.” Max entered full teaching mode. “So what do we need to do to the Humanists?”

Tristan gave a grin full of pure feral hunger. “Cut out their eyes?”

“Something like that,” Max said. “We need subtlety here. Can’t let them know we’re on to them, despite the fact that they haven’t exactly hidden their intent.”

“We can’t let them hold this meeting,” said Lena. “We can’t afford to let them become any more organized than they already are.”

“Find an excuse to close down the Twilight Mists,” Genevieve said.

“And every other major gathering place in Limani? The theater, the high school auditorium?” Lorus shook his head. “I don’t think so. Perhaps cutting off the head instead of removing the eyes might be a better allegory.”

“We need to find Emily Fabbri,” Victory said. “Find her, get her under control.”

“Our control,” Tristan said. “Preferably somewhere the other Humanists won’t go looking for her.”

“I’ll deal with that once we track her down,” Daliana said. “They can search the city all they want, but they’re not going to think of looking on another plane of existence, in the elfhames. And I don’t trust her safety anywhere else.” Her eyes did not leave Bethany.

“Excellent plan,” Max said. “She’s been implicated in the attacks last night, and the police are already looking for her. I can set the mercenaries on the chase in the morning.”

“Consider my panthers at your disposal,” Genevieve said.

“The wolves are already on the hunt,” Tristan said. “After this is over, I’ll put out the word that they’re not allowed to kill her if they find her.” He didn’t look happy about the idea, but Victory knew he would bow to the wishes of the council majority. At least this part of the council.

“We should still do something about a few of the meeting places,” Victory said. This was one area she had plenty of ideas about. “I can manufacture a reason to shut down the Twilight Mists. It’s easy enough to find an old file in my library I never turned over to the new owners with information about hazardous insulation.”

“And everywhere else?” Bethany said. Her voice dared Victory to come up with such a large plan.