"Chances are they're not in the Valley anymore," Leon said. "Those five couldn't hide from us if they were, and Umut would have had to return with them-at the very least for his battler's sake."

"Mightn't he have let his battler starve?"

"Never." Leon knew the man. His tone was absolute.

Galway glanced at Solie. "The question now is, what do we do next?"

"Do?" she repeated.

"We can't condone foreign powers sending a.s.sa.s.sins here and killing our people."

"He's right about that," Leon agreed.

Solie shook her head. "What do you propose we do? Have our battlers destroy Eferem's capital? There are thousands of innocent people there."

"That would be foolish," Leon agreed. "Nothing would guarantee the other kingdoms joining forces against us like that."

"How about we just kill their king?" Heyou suggested.

Solie glanced at him, a little appalled. All this talk of killing sat horribly with her. Then again, they did have twenty-three people dead and five a.s.sa.s.sins on the loose who probably wanted another shot at her. The past week's events had to be taken as acts of war.

Mace spoke up. "I don't want to fight Thrall."

All of the humans looked at him. Heyou seemed confused, but Ril nodded. "Me either."

"I didn't realize the king's battler was special," Leon said.

"He's old," Mace explained. "Extremely old." And the older a sylph was, the more powerful.

"How strong is he?" Solie asked.

"He could wipe the Valley out," Mace replied.

"Oh, him. I remember him," Heyou said. He grinned at Solie. "I ran."

"I d-don't blame you," she stammered.

"There are fifty battlers here," Galway protested. "They'd stop him."

"He could wipe the Valley out," Mace repeated.

"But Alcor doesn't know what he's got," Ril said with a shrug. "Too bad for him. He's so much of a coward he's never tested Thrall in a fight, and Thrall's not going to volunteer the information. He's just standing around waiting for Alcor to die so he can go home."

"So, what do we do?" Solie asked.

The group considered for a time, tossing ideas around that didn't really appeal to them.

At last, Heyou drove one fist into the other. "How about we subsume Thrall into the hive? Then he won't be a problem for us."

Leon rolled his eyes, while Ril pinched the bridge of his nose. Mace frowned. Galway reached over and ruffled the younger battler's hair. "Think about it, boy. You'd need Solie to be right there, and there's no guarantee that Thrall would just stand still and let us."

"There's no guarantee he won't, either."

"There's also no guarantee that he won't decide he should be the lover of the queen."

"Oh." Heyou frowned. "Never mind."

"There's just not much we can do," Solie sighed. "Without those men, we have no proof Alcor tried anything. He'll just deny it. He has no envoys here we can banish, and those merchants who come through from Eferem aren't his men. He wouldn't care if we sent them away and in the long run we'd just be hurting ourselves."

"So we need to be vigilant," Leon said. "If he tries anything else, which he probably will, we have to be ready." He eyed Mace. "If there are any more accidents, we have to make sure that the battlers know not to all go straight for it. The rest of the hive still has to be protected."

Mace nodded, seeing the sense in that.

"And we need to change who's allowed to see Solie," Leon continued, staring across the table at her. "Access to you should be based on more than just how threatening a visitor feels. People need a reason to see you, and if they're not someone well-known and trusted, a battler should stay close. And by that I mean in the room."

Solie nodded, not really liking this, though part of her was pleased at the idea her calendar might get a bit lighter. From the look on Ril's face, it was going to get a lot lighter. Another part of her was very glad at the increased protection for her unborn baby.

"I'm still going to want to see my friends," she pointed out.

"Well, they're hardly people we don't know or trust, are they?"

"True," Solie agreed.

From there the discussion moved to the topic of rebuilding the warehouse, and what, if anything, they could salvage from the wreckage.

Leon walked calmly into the market, making his way through the crowds gathered at the vendors' stalls, his hands in his pockets and the hood of his cloak raised to hide his face. He didn't speak to anyone he pa.s.sed, just made his way in silence, his thoughts calm and peaceful.

This is never going to work, Ril told him.

Leon didn't let himself feel any annoyance. Don't give me away, he thought.

I won't, the battler groused. I won't have to.

He reached the end of the market, coming to the roadway that led to the queen's palace, the arches reaching high into the air even though the throne room itself was underground. He walked toward it, steering clear of the crowds.

A dozen battlers suddenly dropped down on him, slamming him painfully to the ground as they cheered their victory, jostling one another and shouting excitedly, laughing. Bruised, Leon lifted himself onto his forearms and looked up at Mace.

"Did you have to land on me quite so hard?"

Mace raised an eyebrow. "Yes."

"I'm getting too old for this," Leon grumbled as he climbed to his feet.

Ril appeared and helped him up, eyeing his master with an unhappy frown. "I told you it wouldn't work."

"Indeed." Mace crossed his arms. "You said you could evade us."

Gingerly, Leon rubbed his jaw and worked it from side to side. It felt like a tooth was loose. "I thought I could."

"Idiot," Ril sniffed. "They know you. They'd find you no matter what your emotions were."

Leon paused in checking his jaw, thinking about that, and wondered if perhaps he was losing his mind. Was it old age? He hadn't seen that likelihood. "You could have mentioned that before they all landed on me," he pointed out, grimacing at his battler.

Heyou grinned. "That wouldn't have been as much fun."

"I see."

Ril rolled his eyes and grabbed his master's arm. "Come on," he said, dragging him off. "I'm taking you to see Luck."

Disappointed but still knowing he was right that an enemy could walk past a battler, Leon let himself be dragged along like a misbehaving child. The situation amused him enough that he started smiling. The people who'd seen the sudden attack continued to gape, at last grudgingly returning to whatever they had been doing.

A basket of corn on her arm, Sala walked forward. "Was that some sort of game?" she asked.

Leon saw Mace look down at the young woman and shrug. "Not really," he said. Then he turned, likely heading back to his duties with the continuing conviction that no one could get past one of his kind.

For once in his life he had to think about Luck first. That's what she'd said, her tone nearly scornful even while her words were sympathetic. The people of this Valley were killing Luck, wearing her slowly out with their needs, their weaknesses . . . A lot of the injuries she healed, doctors and wise women could fix. Those injuries didn't need Luck, but no, all day, every day, people came to their cottage with the most pathetic of complaints, asking for Luck to heal them and not giving much of anything in return. True, sylphs were paid for their work, but Luck never received anything even remotely good enough to be worth the effort she put forth. The effort that she could be putting into him.

Zem coughed and pressed to his mouth one of the handkerchiefs he always carried. Immediately, Luck reached out to put her hands on him, and the wonderful healing energy flowed. Zem sighed, relaxing.

But the nervousness came back almost immediately as the carriage swayed and rocked up the slope that led out of the Valley. He could hear men and horses outside, shouting back and forth to one another as the caravan went on its way. Zem tried not to think too much, afraid he'd bring the battle sylphs down on him, but they reacted to malice. He was only frightened.

Where are we going? Luck asked him silently.

Zem reached out to cup her cheek, and she pressed against his palm. Her skin felt waxy but warm, soft, and pliant. He smiled at her. "We're going to where you'll be appreciated," he promised.

They were headed where she wouldn't have to heal every little knee sc.r.a.pe of every ungrateful child in this backward Valley, all for a mere pittance. Sala had promised them that. In Yed, healers only helped the richest of men and women, and they were paid huge sums of money in return. Sala had told Zem where to go, whom he had to see, and how he could become rich. Luck would be able to focus almost all of her attention on him, then, just as she should. Sala had even loaned him the money to pay for his pa.s.sage on this merchant train.

The little man swallowed and settled back in his seat, his coat clutched tightly around himself, even though the interior of the carriage was already very warm. For now, the men he rode with didn't even know about Luck's presence. It was safer that way. It was safer overall if no one knew they were gone until they were too far away to drag back.

For her part, Luck sat across from him in silence, content and curious to follow him wherever he chose to lead.

Chapter Twelve.

Summer was pa.s.sing, the harvest was in and people were beginning to prepare for winter. Throughout the Valley moods were high, most people unconcerned with anything more strenuous than their families and friends.

For the council and all others in the know, things were a bit more stressful. Still, as time pa.s.sed, Solie found it hard to keep worries about a.s.sa.s.sins and enemy kings foremost in her mind. Yes, battlers were around her all of the time, but they'd pretty much been there all the time anyway; and now that her morning sickness had pa.s.sed, she was too mellow to care.

Her hands cupping her rounded stomach, Solie wandered down the road toward the summoning hall, smiling when she was greeted by each of the people she pa.s.sed. Dillon and Heyou followed. Those two were the sylphs most commonly with her, for familiarity's sake more than anything else. Many of the women in the Valley had offered their own battlers as bodyguards, like Sala, but Solie liked Dillon's quiet and of course she loved Heyou.

Dillon wore the form of a large black cat, his head even with her thigh. Heyou was in his usual shape. Dillon only stayed during the day, spending the evenings with his own master, as Solie didn't feel she really needed two battlers with her at night. Since the warehouse incident and the escape of the a.s.sa.s.sins, nothing had happened in the Valley at all-except, of course, for Zem leaving with Luck. But while that was infuriating, it was hardly surprising. He'd always been a greedy, petty little man.

It was, however, a problem. As queen, Solie could order Luck to return, but that risked the sylph's survival if she wasn't able to convince Zem to join her, and Solie doubted the little man would ever dare show his face again after deserting them. To solve the problem, they'd been trying a different tactic.

Solie went into the summoning hall, which was a large, airy building with so many windows that the interior was lit by daylight. It was a single chamber several hundred feet across, the summoning circle inlaid on the floor in precious stones brought by earth sylphs from deep underground. The pillars that framed the windows were creamy white marble and heavily embossed. It was a beautiful place, as the sylphs felt it ought to be.

Twenty priests stood arrayed around the circle, chanting. Their words reverberated through the room, echoing from the perfect acoustics of the rounded ceiling. The circle itself was glowing, with a second circle of energy hanging directly above. This circle started to glow as well. The s.p.a.ce inside shimmered with changing colors.

A woman with a club foot stood in the center of the circle, looking nervously upward. She was the offering; her injury, they hoped, would be attractive to a healer on the other side. Such sylphs weren't simple to find. Healers weren't common in the other world, either, and most stayed in their hives. Even when sent out to heal an injured sylph, they weren't easy to lure away. First, they had to want to come. Second, they had to get past their battle sylph guardians. No hive wanted to lose healers.

Near Petr, the head priest, was a fire sylph. She wasn't Petr's-he'd refused a new sylph when his first was killed nearly a decade before-but her master stood nearby. The fire sylph had shown a great sensitivity for what waited on the other side of the gate. She wore the shape of a little girl made of flickering flame, and Ash was her name. She liked to have a specific purpose beyond the standard role of "Keep things lit, keep things warm." Her job was to locate sylphs-or rather, to determine what sylphs were on the other side of any gate they opened.

"No healers," she announced. There never were any.

Petr sighed and made a gesture. The chanting stopped. Immediately, both gates dimmed, and the one in the air closed and disappeared. They'd wait five minutes and then try again.

The gate opened every time in a different place, though the humans were pretty sure the locations were all within a set range. There was likely some sort of corresponding physicality to their worlds. Every sylph brought through the gate here had seemed to originate from one of only a dozen or so original hives, and none of those, according to Devon's letters, equated to any of the tapped hives in Meridal.

Solie rubbed her stomach, still not envying Eapha for being queen to so many sylphs. Still, having Meridal as an ally did reduce the threat of Eferem. It was a great relief to know that within two weeks of sending a mental call to Airi she could-in theory, anyway-have an entire army of battle sylphs and their masters arriving to defend her people. Her own battlers would no doubt be unhappy, but they would obey her, and Leon had promised that Eapha was no enemy to them. She had no reason to be.

Still, they needed a healer. Badly. Human doctors could do a lot, but there were many injuries that would mean death without a healer sylph. Solie didn't want to see that happen. Eapha had dozens, she knew, so maybe if they didn't draw a healer of their own before the baby was born, Solie would ask her to send one until they did.

She stood and watched two more attempts to open a gate near a healer, both unsuccessful. Finally, she left, heading back out into the sunshine with her entourage. She felt discouraged but not really unhappy. Not with the weight in her belly. However the child was going to turn out, Solie was already desperately in love with her.

Solie hadn't needed to ask Heyou who the biological father was; he just wasn't any good at keeping secrets. She smiled at the happy battler as they walked. Would the baby end up looking like Devon? she wondered. She hadn't talked to Devon about it except for the day he left, and Devon hadn't mentioned it in any of his letters. Knowing how he felt about battlers, she doubted it had been his idea to be a donor. She didn't want to risk embarra.s.sing him or get Heyou feeling jealous.

"Hey, girl."

Solie looked up to see Galway riding toward her, dressed in a bearskin cape and leading a second horse. His son Nelson walked beside him, dressed in a normal tunic, which showed that, wherever his father was going, Nelson wasn't following.

"Off hunting again?" Solie asked.

The former trapper smiled. "Now that the harvest is in, I figured I'd better. Before the weather turns cold."

"Or before Mom thinks of something for him to do instead," Nelson suggested.

Solie giggled.

Heyou glared at Galway. "Hey! What am I supposed to eat while you're gone?"

Solie could feel he wasn't really angry, and Galway could tell his battler's moods just as easily. "I'll be gone for only a few days, boy, and if you get hungry, you know how to find me. Besides, that's why I came looking for you before I left. Come here."

Leaving Solie's side, Heyou went over and leaned against Galway's leg. He stared up at the mounted man, and his eyes softened as he drew Galway's energy.

Unless a battler was starved and drew very heavily, the master never even felt the loss. Galway smiled down fondly at the sylph. "Good boy," he chuckled, and he ruffled Heyou's hair.

"That always looks so weird," Nelson complained.

"Does not!" Heyou mock growled, stepping belligerently into the young man's face. His sort-of stepbrother grinned and puffed out his chest. Solie rolled her eyes.

"Oh! They're not going to fight, are they?"