The Silent Tempest (Book 2) (18 page)

Turning, he left the room.

The wardens minding the teens watched him
with puzzled faces when he returned with both Kate and Layla. They found other
directions to gaze once they saw the look in his eyes, however.

“Tell your master I’ll be taking this one
as well,” he said, gesturing at Layla. “We can discuss the terms later.” A
warden was considerably more valuable than any of the other slaves within one
of the camps, but he hoped the strangely helpful Thillmarius would prove
amenable in this regard as well.

Glancing at the others, he told them, “Let’s
go.”

“They took our clothes,” said Emma
Phillips. The girl was trying to cover herself with two skinny arms and
failing awkwardly. The gooseflesh on her arms told Tyrion she must be cold.
He hadn’t noticed the cold air until then.

“You don’t have clothes anymore, not
here,” he stated flatly, starting to walk.

Most of them followed, but Emma held back,
hesitating. Apparently they hadn’t been outside much since arriving, at least
not enough to make them lose their self-consciousness regarding nudity.

“You can stay here if you like,” called
Tyrion, “but they won’t give you your clothes back.”

Emma followed.

Most of them were cold he realized, even
those whose powers had awakened. No one had shown them how to keep themselves
warm. Kate seemed fine, though. Layla was keeping a layer of warm air around
both of them. The observation colored his temples, and his ears grew hot. His
temper was rising again.

“Where have you been?” asked Gabriel,
walking closer to him than the others.

“The She’Har felt the need to interrogate
me.”

“We thought you were dead,” added Brigid.
“It looked bad when they took you away.”

He said nothing, though he could feel
Kate’s eyes upon him.

“Where are you going to keep them?” asked
Layla.

“At my house, for now,” he replied. He
had been thinking of that for a while, and it was the best solution he could
come up with. There wasn’t enough room there, of course, and it wasn’t
finished, except for his bedroom, but at least there was a roof.

“The white-stone?” said Layla.

“The what?” asked Tyrion.

“The white-stone place you have been
building,” clarified the warden.

The people of Ellentrea and the other
slave cities lived in buildings grown from the roots of the god trees, so it
was understandable that she didn’t really know what to make of his stone
construction.

“Yes,” he nodded.
White stone,
the
phrase gave him an idea. “I prefer to call it ‘Albamarl’,” he added, using the
words in Erollith for white and stone.

They took the long way, following the
edges of the Prathion border and skirting the edges of Illeniel territory. He
didn’t want to be forced to answer any awkward questions. Albamarl was at the
edge of the foothills, where they bumped up against the beginnings of the
Illeniel Grove, just a few miles south of where he had had his recent
confrontation.

Many of the young men and women breathed a
sigh of relief when they entered the building. The air was warm, maintained at
a comfortable temperature by the enchantments he had worked into the stone
walls.

He made a quick walk through, reassuring
himself that everything was still as he had left it. The wagon they had
brought was parked behind the building, still loaded with supplies. The fresh
goods had spoiled, but most of the dry goods were still usable. Beans, salt,
and salt pork, onions, and some apples, much of it consisted of things that
Tyrion had had little access to while living among the She’Har.

There’s flour!
he noted with some excitement as his mind explored the contents
once more. Flour meant gravy, or maybe even bread, if anyone knew how to
bake.
Some of them do,
he said to himself, even as he mentally avoided
thinking about Kate. One of the boys, Jack, had been raised in a bakery.

Tyrion thought for a moment. If he was
going to manage fifteen people, he was going to need more room, more supplies.
The ones whose powers had awakened would need to be trained. There was much to
be done.

He called his fifteen young charges
together, pointing for them to line up in the large front room that was set to
one side of the entry hall. Eventually, he planned for it to be a kitchen, but
currently it was just a large empty space.

He eyed them, noting which ones had
visibly wakened their abilities and refreshing his memory of their names. “David,
Sarah, Jack, Abigail, Ryan, Brigid, and Gabriel,” he named them aloud, pointing
for them to move to the other side of the room as he did. “I want you seven
over here. The rest of you will go outside and unload the wagon. Sort through
the goods and wares. Some of it has spoiled while it sat out there in the
elements. Discard the bad and bring the rest inside.”

Ian Collins voiced what several of them
were probably thinking, “What makes you think you can order us around?” He was
probably the largest of the boys, but perhaps not the brightest of them. At
fifteen he was already as tall as Tyrion and possibly wider, an impressive
thing considering Tyrion’s not insubstantial physique.

Tyrion graced him with a wicked smile,
walking forward to stand nose to nose with the large teen. “You think you’re a
match for me already, boy?”

The others had already moved away, and Ian
was sweating as he attempted to keep his eyes on Tyrion’s. He knew he had made
a mistake. “I—I d—don’t have any m—magic yet, but…”

“…but what?” interrupted Tyrion. “Were
you going to say that, if it weren’t for that, you’d teach me a lesson? Is
that it?”

“N—no, ‘course not,” blurted the younger
man.

“Go ahead,” challenged Tyrion. “I’ll give
you three free shots, if you think you can land one. After that I’ll fight you
without my power if that’s what you want.”

Ian stared at him, clenching his jaw. He
considered the offer for a long moment and then without warning, he struck,
launching a sharp blow from the waist, aiming for Tyrion’s midsection.

The boy was fast, and the move surprised
Tyrion. Given the short distance and the teen’s speed, he wasn’t able to avoid
it, but he did manage to turn his body and tense in time to avoid having the
wind knocked out of him. He felt the impact in his ribs.
That’s going to
leave a bruise.

Ian hadn’t waited for him to recover, the
other hand had come up and swung wide, aiming to catch him in the side of the
head as he naturally tried to avoid the body shot.

It wasn’t quick enough, however. Tyrion
had expected that and ducked his head forward and to the side, flexing his
knees as he stepped in and to the right. Before the teen could make his third
attack, he reached up and put his hand out, shoving backward on the boy’s
chest. Ian was still slightly off balance from his missed swing, and he
stumbled backward.

Tyrion kicked his leg, sending him to the
hard stone floor. When the boy started to rise, he kicked again, catching him
in the stomach and leaving him gasping. “You’ve got good instincts, boy, even
if your balls are too big for your brain. I bet you were in a lot of fights
back home, weren’t you?”

Ian coughed, gasping for air.

“Ever broken a rib?” asked Tyrion

“Daniel! That’s enough!” shouted Kate,
starting forward, but Layla grabbed her arm, cautioning her to silence.

Tyrion watched the boy carefully, waiting
until he had almost gotten his air, then kicked again, sending the hard part of
his shin into the boy’s ribs with an audible crack. Ian fell away to the side
with a heavy, gasping croak. He was clutching at his side, struggling to draw
breath.

“Hurts doesn’t it?” said Tyrion. “The
pain is so intense you can’t draw breath. It’ll go on until you fear that
you’re about to die, but not to worry. Usually your body will let you start to
get small breaths before you pass out, but they hurt like the devil. It’s not
something you forget.”

He looked around at the rest of the room.
The others had scattered to the far corners, each of them trying to put as much
distance between the sadistic older man and his victim as possible. Only Layla
had stayed in her original position, watching him calmly. She held Kate
tightly by one arm.

Tyrion waved at the seven he named before,
“I want you seven to come closer. I was going to begin with teaching you how
to stay warm, but today is your lucky day. We’ll begin with learning how to
mend a broken rib. The rest of you…” he eyed the others, “…go unload the
wagon. Bring the sacks of beans in here. We can use them to prop this idiot
up, to help him breathe until we get this bone fixed.”

He took his time with the bones, making
sure they had time to understand what he was doing. He also tried to keep it
as painless as possible, although he wasn’t entirely as successful at that as
he might have hoped. Tyrion was beginning to feel a bit of guilt now that his
temper had cooled.

Kate was watching him with an expression
that told him exactly what she thought of his methods.
Did my anger with
her make me more cruel than necessary?
It was not the sort of thought he
was used to anymore.

The past ten years had been neat and
simple. Once he had been allowed to leave the arena for good, he had lived
peacefully, no children, no family, and almost no friends. He had been
isolated within a bubble. Now he was being forced to emerge into an
environment fraught with annoyances and complications, and the only social
tools he understood involved blood and threats.

But I have to make them ready,
he told himself.
There’s every chance that the Illeniel Grove
will force them into the arena.

But if they didn’t? In that case, he had
made an ass of himself for nothing, alienating the only other truly human
people he had any hope of interacting with. The slaves of the She’Har had
proven to be very poor company, with a few exceptions.

One of those exceptions was standing
beside Kate now, talking quietly to her. He might have classified Layla as an
acquaintance before this, which was actually pretty high praise for one of the
people raised in the pens. Other than Amarah, and Garlin, he doubted he would
have considered any of the others even remotely familiar.

She was very close to Garlin,
he reminded himself,
as close as wardens get anyway.
He
wondered if she would hate him once she knew the circumstances of her friend’s
death. She had been friends with Garlin in what her people considered the
‘normal’ usage of the word friend, meaning acquaintances with benefits.
And
now she has Kate to fill the tiny void in whatever it is she uses for a heart,
he
thought bitterly.

He wondered how she would react once he
told her that he had killed her lover. Layla looked at him then, glancing up
as if she knew his thoughts had been about her. Leaving his students and his
newly mended patient, he walked over to the two women.

“I need to talk to you,” he began.

“I’m not really in the mood for
conversation,” said Kate angrily.

“Not you,” he corrected, focusing more
directly on the tall dark haired woman standing beside her. “You.”

“Haven’t you done enough already?!” said
Kate spitefully. “I think you made yourself clear enough earlier. If you
hurt…”

“It’s about Garlin,” he said, interrupting
the beginning of what sounded like might be a spectacular tirade.

Layla’s eyes grew slightly wider, and Kate
paused, unsure who he was referring to at first. Unfortunately her memory was
uncanny sometimes, especially regarding names and people. Kate’s face lit with
recognition, “Wait, was that the warden we met? The first one, I think you
said his name when we…”

“Kate,” he said, giving her a serious
stare.

“I know he is dead,” announced Layla.
“None of them returned.”

Kate was watching them closely,
understanding dawning on her rapidly as a look of concern swept over her
features. Layla glanced at her before returning her attention to Tyrion.

“Branlyinti had claimed one of my
children, as well as my father,” he began. “He stood in my path. I was forced
to eliminate him in order to reclaim them.”

“You killed all of them?” asked Layla, her
features smooth, like stone.

Tyrion nodded.

“Except the She’Har,” added Kate. “I shot
him with the crossbow.”

Layla looked back and forth between them,
“That was a large group, a trainer and a dozen wardens…”

Tyrion looked down, “Garlin helped me; not
directly, but he told me the groves of the others before the fight began.”

“And you killed him?” she asked.

“He was first.”

Layla blinked and her cheek twitched for a
moment. “He was a fool for you.”

‘Fool’ was the word the slaves of the
She’Har used to describe friends, lovers, or people who were simply too
emotional. Tyrion nodded, “He was a fool for you too, Layla.”