"We need a healer," she repeated.

Dillon nodded in agreement.

We should leave this place.

Slowly, the nameless sylph lifted her head, her six eyes swirling open as she looked around. The fields were quiet while the suns went down, the place where she lay deserted or nearly so. A battle sylph from the hive drifted along the border between field and rock, searching out threats.

Shh, she warned.

The hive battler drifted overhead, glaring down at her. Not quite hating her but not impressed either. He snorted as she pressed herself against the ground and then continued on his way.

I hate them, her companion said.

She didn't answer, though she supposed he had reason. He'd been thrown out of his own hive, his link to his queen broken before he was chased away by his brothers. He'd spent ages living on the outskirts of other hives, eating whatever he could scavenge while avoiding predators and enemy sylphs. His only hope was to get big enough and strong enough to attract a queen's attention and be subsumed into her hive as a new mate. Until then, he hid and hated.

Slowly the nameless sylph shifted, moving along a row of plants and letting the exile free from where he'd hidden beneath her. He sighed and shook himself, his lightning flashing with repressed need. Where he'd touched her, she itched madly.

We should go, he said again.

Go where? she demanded, terrified at the very thought. This was her home, had always been her home, even if her hive mates did growl and recoil whenever she entered the hive now. No one would even let her heal them, and even this far away she could feel the queen's displeasure. But the mountains and chasms beyond these fields were alien and evil.

Where in the world could we ever possibly go?

The council's offices were located behind Solie's throne room, all of them arrayed off a reception chamber with a single desk. Ril rather liked it. To get to any of the offices, a visitor had to pa.s.s the battler chamber, go through the throne room and, finally, get past him. In a way, this was all another layer of protection for the Valley's important personages, though it took the form of paperwork.

The battler went through the week's schedule, his face impa.s.sive. He still wasn't sure how he felt about the job. When Devon was doing it, he hadn't paid much attention. Leon's office was next to the queen's, and if Ril wanted to see either Solie or his master, he'd just gone right on through. Devon hadn't stopped him; he'd been far too terrified of battle sylphs to try and stop any of them. Now that Ril had the job, he didn't let anyone through; not without a good reason. Not even battlers or Leon could just stroll in and pester the queen.

The blond battler smirked a bit. Still, Leon usually had a reason.

The door opened. Ril eyed it, even though he knew who was there. Given that he was a battle sylph, there was no one else on guard. Solie wasn't in her office, anyway, though Leon was. The queen was at the summoning hall, helping again in the search for a new healer.

Lizzy entered, smiling at Ril as she crossed the room. He immediately shoved his paperwork to one side and leaned over the desk. She laughed softly and bent down, meeting him halfway with a soft kiss. Ril relaxed into it, his eyes closing as his lips moved against hers. Lizzy braced her elbows against the desk, her fingers twining through his hair. Time stopped, all of the battler's attention focused on the woman before him.

"You two do realize this is a public place, right?"

Lizzy pulled back, blushing, and Ril glanced up at Leon, who was standing in the doorway to his office. He met his master's gaze evenly. At first he'd been afraid Leon would order him away from Lizzy, but Leon had come to accept their relationship. Right now the man's emotions were a mix of amus.e.m.e.nt and exasperation.

"Um," Lizzy said. "Hi, Daddy. I brought you lunch." She lifted a basket she'd set by her feet.

Leon's eyebrow rose. "Is there anything else you wanted?"

She shrugged and shot a quick look at Ril, who stayed silent. They'd talked over her ambitions the night before in bed. He liked her ideas, but it was up to her to convince her father.

Leon glanced over, picking up on Ril's approval. "Well?" he asked his daughter.

Lizzy shrugged, rubbing her hand up one arm. "I just want to help out with all the things Uncle Galway used to do. I know you're busy already, you and Ril . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"And you don't want to spend your life knitting afghans and helping your mother cook dinner," Leon added.

"No." Lizzy grimaced. "I'm bored out of my mind. Fields and harvests and knitting and babysitting? I don't like those. I want to deal with people. With important things."

"So you're looking to take over for Galway," Leon said. Ril felt both the man's interest and uncertainty. "He held a pretty important position. He handled all of the Valley's economics."

"I can learn to do that," Lizzy said. "Uncle Galway did."

"Galway was a lot older than you, sweetheart."

"But he spent most of those years in the woods setting traps! He didn't know a thing about economics when he started. Not really. And I'm good at math."

"He knew a lot about trade. He knew about haggling, and about travel to other places. He knew that-"

"Yeah, yeah," Lizzy interrupted. She eyed Ril. "Help me here!"

It wasn't quite an order, but Ril still eyed his first master. He had to obey both Leon and Lizzy, just as he had to obey the queen. But Leon's orders would hold him more than Lizzy's, which they both knew. It was a good thing that he only gave orders when he had to.

Ril sighed. "If she works here, I won't have to go running back and forth all the time to make sure n.o.body's trying to kill either of you."

Lizzy giggled at that. Leon's eyebrows shot up.

"I don't think either of us is in danger of immediate a.s.sa.s.sination," he pointed out.

"Two battle sylph masters have recently died," Ril replied.

"That's coincidence. Neither was murdered."

"We don't care," Ril said.

Both Lizzy and Leon were quiet for a moment, absorbing that. He was surprised they hadn't picked up on it already. Not that he gave a d.a.m.n if they thought he was being silly. Two masters were dead and all his brothers were upset. He was upset. Every battler in the Valley was keeping his master as close as possible, and when they couldn't, they were arranging for someone else to watch them. Hector had been watching Lizzy while Ril worked, but Ril would rather she was here.

"There are also five a.s.sa.s.sins out there that we can't seem to find," he pointed out.

Leon sighed and regarded his daughter. He said nothing, just stood there.

Ril's temper flared. "Just do it, Leon," he snapped. "Teach her. You know you're overworked, and she can probably help that. Maybe she'll make it as a council member, or maybe she'll be better as an a.s.sistant to one. Either way, let's get her working here. So, just stop arguing and do it, okay?" He grabbed his papers and sullenly started shuffling them. "I have work to do."

Lizzy and Leon gaped at him; then Leon tapped his daughter on the shoulder and pointed to his office. "Come on. We'll discuss it. I'm not making any promises, but I'll give teaching you a try. You were always a bright little girl."

Grinning, Lizzy hurried into his office. Leon followed, shaking his head. Ril set his papers back on the desk, his focus on their complex mix of emotions.

The door to the entry room opened. Ril's head snapped up, and he snarled a warning that he did not want to be bothered. Sala blinked at him in surprise as his growl deepened. He wanted Lizzy and Leon working together; he didn't want anyone to interrupt them before that partnership was arranged. Besides, Sala wasn't on any of his lists.

She backed quietly away, closing the door, and Ril returned to his paperwork.

Outside, Sala frowned and adjusted her shawl. That hadn't been expected at all, though perhaps it should have been. She'd listened to Lizzy's stories about her imprisonment in Meridal. Most battle sylphs were pathetic around women, but that one had killed some. A lot of them.

She turned and walked away, not prepared for any kind of confrontation that she could avoid. She had other things she needed to do, anyway. Important things.

Chapter Fourteen.

Moreena Pril had never considered herself a beautiful woman. She was too thin, her face too long, and her nose too big. She had no hips to speak of, and her ears stuck out. While her sisters were beautiful, Moreena had managed to inherit every odd characteristic of her family all at once. She'd never married, never attracted a lover, and had joined the Community, which broke away from Para Dubh, as much to get away from her neighbors' laughter and hateful looks as for a chance to make something more of her life than just being the town spinster.

Dillon had changed all of that. When the Widow Blackwell asked her to be a battler master at the age of thirty-two, she'd never really believed that anyone would come through the gate for her. Not her. But Dillon had. And shape didn't matter to him, not the way he flickered between forms. Sometimes Moreena thought she was making up for a lifetime of forced abstinence with a hundred different lovers.

Humming to herself, since it was a beautiful fall morning and the leaves on the trees were turning her favorite color, she made her way out the back door of her cottage and down to the end of the garden where the well stood. Dillon was away helping to guard the queen, but she didn't mind. Solie was a sweet girl, and Dillon always came back at night. He didn't sleep himself, but they both liked when Moreena used his shoulder as a pillow.

A gentle breeze blew over the garden, bringing with it the smell of the neighbor's baking, and Moreena's mouth watered as she stepped up to the rounded rim of the covered well. A crosspiece had a rope hanging from it that could be wound up or down with a crank, and a bucket was on its side on the ground. Moreena looked down in surprise, given that she'd left the bucket sitting on the well. Picking it up, she leaned against the well so that she could drop it straight down without knocking loose dirt from the walls into the water.

The rocks of the well, which had always been solid before, gave way under her hand. Moreena screamed as she pitched forward, scrambling madly for anything to stop herself, and she caught the rope that held the bucket. She staggered forward, and her legs plunged into the well and hit the other side.

Moreena screamed again, desperately hanging on and trying to pull her feet up enough to get them back on the ground. Her long skirts got in the way, and as she swung back and forth, the wooden crosspiece above her creaked at the weight. Distantly, she felt Dillon's terror and rage.

Frantic, Moreena tried to pull herself up the rope, but she just didn't have enough strength. Her hands trembled, the skin on them rubbed raw. She could feel Dillon coming, but her arms were shaky and she was weeping, frightened and weak. The crossbar creaked again, and then suddenly it splintered, dropping her another few inches. She shrieked. The crossbar broke fully in half.

A hand grabbed the rope above her, then her arm, and Moreena was hauled out of the well as easily as if she were a kitten. She stared straight into the face of her neighbor's battler. Like most battle sylphs, he was beautiful, but he also looked incredibly angry.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Moreena shivered as he let her go, hugging herself against the sudden cold as she looked at her collapsed well. If Blue hadn't been nearby . . .

"I didn't know you stayed home during the day," she whispered, not able to think clearly just yet. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "I was watching over both you and Casi. Since Dillon couldn't be here today, he asked me to."

Moreena stared at him. He'd been guarding her as well as his own master? How strange!

A black cloud filled with frantic lightning suddenly flashed over the cottage. Down it came, Dillon shifting into human shape even before he reached the ground. He ran across the garden and threw his arms around Moreena, hugging her close. He was actually whimpering. Moreena started to cry as well.

Blue watched them for a moment, but being there was making him uncomfortable. Finally he went back across the garden wall to Casi's house, determined that nothing was ever going to happen to her. Not while he was alive.

The battlers were in uproar. After the near death of a third master, it took hours to calm them down. Even now, they still had not returned to normal. All of the Valley sylphs clung to their masters at this point, not just the battlers, and in any cases where a sylph couldn't, they arranged for another sylph to watch their master in their stead. Any master who protested just ended up with a dozen more sylphs coming to convince them to change their minds.

It wasn't quite what Sala wanted. While Dillon wouldn't let Moreena out of his sight, and therefore wasn't guarding the queen anymore, Heyou had taken over. Sala had hoped Dillon would be gone without a paranoid Heyou in his place. She'd have to do something about that.

Sala sat on a chair in the corner of her bedroom, watching two creatures writhe together on the bed. Neither of them looked entirely human, or anything like their normal forms, but that didn't matter to her. She liked s.e.x and liked to watch s.e.x, and she especially liked having the power to order these two battle sylphs to have s.e.x with each other.

Wat was one. He was still hers, Gabralina never having rescinded that foolish order to obey her. The stupid girl had probably even forgotten. She'd undoubtedly meant for the loan to be temporary, but that didn't matter to Sala. Wat was hers now as surely as Claw, and in some ways he was even more useful. He was dim enough that he'd forget everything she directed, and now, with his banishment from the battler ranks, he had no schedule to keep. He was always free for her use.

Sala leaned back in her chair, licking her lips as she watched the entwined battlers. Wat lay on his back against the bed, that eternally confused look on his face as though he didn't understand what was happening to him. He probably didn't. He never did. He'd sabotaged the shelving at the warehouse perfectly, though, drawing Claw and Luck away so that Rachel could be poisoned successfully. Wat had then freed the Eferem a.s.sa.s.sins and carried them out of the Valley, where he'd killed them and buried the bodies, with the story she'd given him turning the council's attention toward Eferem.

Not that there would be a council much longer. Wat and Claw had worked together to kill Galway, and they'd sabotaged Moreena's well to distract her horribly protective battle sylph from the queen.

Sala's gut twisted, though her expression didn't change and she still enjoyed the show. The Valley's battlers were beginning to believe someone was intentionally killing their masters. If they managed to convince their humans they were right . . . She needed to give the battlers someone to blame so that they'd calm down and stop watching everything so closely.

Wat whimpered on the bed, Claw speeding up. Neither of them would do this without orders, which only made it more interesting. Of the two, Sala preferred Wat. She couldn't feel him. While she needed Claw, his grief and barely controlled hysteria were alien to her. They were almost disturbing. She hadn't expected that.

It didn't matter. Not so long as he did as told. Which he would. He knew she'd killed his last master, and he remembered everything she ordered him to do, and he was aware of much more that was coming. Not all of it, of course, and not yet the one thing she truly needed him for, but enough. Enough to eventually drive him completely mad so that he would do everything she commanded, even the thing she'd learned no sane sylph would do. That was part of why she had him and Wat together like this now. The other part was how good it made her feel.

Sala licked her lips again and slid a hand down her skirts to touch herself. Her power over the two battlers, her absolute power, was intoxicating. She smiled as she watched, part of her mind still devising plans within plans and rea.s.sessing targets.

She'd failed to kill Moreena, but she had succeeded in getting Dillon away from Solie. Once she arranged for a patsy to take the blame for everything that happened so far, she'd start again, winnowing away Solie's support until she was left unprotected. Then Sala would take her place.

Take away the queen's support. Sala shuddered delicately, pleasure swelling through her. Lizzy aside, there was only one human member of the council left. But Sala couldn't move too quickly and risk underestimating him. Not Leon.

Claw lay entwined with Wat, their bodies joined on the bed even as their minds recoiled from each other. Back in the world they came from, there were many battlers who found happiness with each other, but those weren't the battlers who risked the gate. And, both Wat and Claw had masters. Wat was unhappy here, wanting Gabralina and uselessly reaching for her despite Sala's orders. Claw was unhappy, too, but there was no point in seeking rea.s.surance from Sala.

He'd known what a mistake he'd made the moment he bonded to her, how she'd set him up to choose her when his dearest Rachel died. Sala had killed her. He knew that absolutely, knew it down to his core, but there was nothing he could do about it. The calm placidity of Sala's surface mind was just a mask, light sparkling on the surface of deep water that hid black mud below. Underneath was nothing, just a gaping eternity of emptiness with no love, fear, anger, or soul. Claw was trapped there, screaming inside worse than he ever had with Boradel.

He pushed himself against Wat with fake l.u.s.t generated only to satisfy Sala's perverse needs and felt eternal madness push against him. It promised peace. No more need to think, no more need to feel; he could just gibber and laugh inside his own head, not caring what was done with him anymore. But he wasn't quite there.

Why not? He'd been ordered to kill Galway in the shape of a bear, knowing how it would tear one of his hive brothers apart. He'd wrecked the integrity of Moreena's well so that she'd fall in and be killed, thereby crippling Dillon's ability to be an effective guard. Sala was playing with him, hoping he would go insane. She had chosen him for his damaged spirit, needing him crazy enough that he'd do whatever she wanted. He knew that and had to obey her anyway. He had no choice.

He wanted to lose his mind, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw Rachel sitting in her chair by the window and knitting by the light of an oil lantern, or standing in front of her cla.s.s, speaking about math, or reading the tiny history of their Valley. Even now when he closed them, he saw her beneath him, lying nude and beautiful, her soft gray hair spread out over the pillow, her lips pursed and spots of color high on her cheeks.

Claw groaned, his head bowed nearly to the pillow. He moved faster, his hands clutching his lover's. Rachel smiled back at him, rocking gently and whispering.

"You're such a good soul, Claw," she said in his memory. "Such a gentle heart. Don't doubt yourself, my sweet. Not ever. I love you."

Claw thrust harder, rocking the bed and slamming it against the wall. He wanted this done. In the back of his mind, he felt Sala's sudden climax.

"I will always love you," Rachel whispered.

Claw cried out, stiffening, and he collapsed, lying against the warm body below him. It wasn't Rachel. His lovely Rachel.

Wat made a confused, questioning sound, and Claw pressed their cheeks together.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into the other battle sylph's ear, low enough that Sala wouldn't hear. Wat just whimpered again and put his arm around Claw's neck. The two held each other, seeking comfort for the brief moments they were allowed.

For four years Thul Cramdon had been leading a supply caravan from Eferem to Yed, then back through Eferem to Sylph Valley and then on to Para Dubh. He'd been one of the first to add Sylph Valley to his route, and as a result, he'd always enjoyed a degree of preferential treatment. He'd only had problems once, when one of his drovers got himself killed by battle sylphs for groping a girl. Thul had been careful to make sure nothing similar happened again. Not with his employees.

"I've always been agreeable to your rules!" he shouted now. "You have no right to do this to me!"

The man he shouted at, the chancellor of the Valley, regarded him impa.s.sively from across the desk. He wasn't the usual person Thul dealt with, but Thul had heard Galway died. The blonde girl on one side of him seemed a little less sure of herself, but the battle sylph on the other looked p.r.o.ne to violence. So, Thul took a deep breath and calmed. He wouldn't help his case by getting smeared across the wall behind him.

"It's not fair," he said instead. "I've invested thousands in coming here. I can't afford to lose that money."

"You won't," the chancellor told him, his hands clasped before him on the desk. "We're not turning down your trade. We're just setting limits on where your men are allowed to go while you're here."

"You're restricting me to the main road and a three-block area near the edge of town."

"Yes," the chancellor said. His eyes were flat. "Eferem has already sent both spies and a.s.sa.s.sins here. You're from Eferem. We don't want anyone thinking you might be a threat."