He shrugged slowly, watching her upside down. "Working. Something to do with food. She'll be back later." He looked bored.

"And you're not supposed to be somewhere else right now?" she clarified.

"No," he said.

"Good," she told him. Undoing her dress she said, "Service me."

What Gabralina would think of Sala having s.e.x with her battler, Sala didn't know, but given how Wat had been ordered to obey her, she didn't need her friend to find out. Conveniently, she'd learned that Wat could be ordered to forget whatever she asked. And, coitus with a battle sylph was too good to pa.s.s up. No worry of pregnancy, no bother with commitment, and her pleasure was paramount. Most interestingly, since battlers could change shape, they were able to provide all sorts of simultaneous stimulation that Sala was pretty sure the boring women of this Valley never thought of.

Wat worked every erogenous zone Sala had at once, leaving her shuddering with pleasure and him with a somewhat lost look. Sala didn't care what he thought, any more than she worried about Gabralina coming back at an inconvenient time. When the girl got close, Wat would warn her, and once they were done, he'd forget. That was tremendously useful.

It also wasn't enough. Not after hearing what having a battle sylph of one's own was like. Still, she had a lead on getting one, and from there, getting more control in the Valley. It would take a while, but her plan was doable, and thanks to Gabby's foolishness, she was already directing one battler. She had potential links to another, and in time she'd have one of her own. From there, she just had to remove a few human obstacles.

It would be hers-all the power and wealth she'd worked for in Yed, using Gabby to get into the coffers of the magistrate before she finally poisoned the man, expecting Gabralina to inherit his estate. That had been her one mistake, because Gabralina fell under suspicion for murder instead. That's how she'd ended up on the altar as a battler sacrifice. Sala had cut her losses at that point, but that letter from her friend had been a gift from the heavens. The potential here was so much greater, and she wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

Sala screamed under Wat's weight. He filled every part of her that could be filled, his body distorted and ugly to do so but perfect for what she wanted. He was part of her plan. So were a lot of other people, whether they planned to become traitors or not. By the end of it, Sala would be queen and finally have everything she was ent.i.tled to. She just had to get rid of all the people on the council first, and of course, her precious majesty Solie as well.

Chapter Eight.

The healer didn't know what to do. The queen recoiled from her, snarling and ordering her away, forcing her out of the ruling chambers even while the other healers curled up around her, staring. She felt a terrible despair at that, and since it started, the mild itch in her body had slowly grown worse, spreading into her very core.

Was she sick? Was that why the queen was rejecting her? If so, it was no sickness she'd ever seen, and the other healers didn't understand it either-those who were still talking to her, anyway. She couldn't affect the feeling inside her, not even using all her healing skill. The itch just kept burrowing deeper, spreading until it felt like even the pattern that bound her to her queen was beginning to break.

To a sylph, that was the most horrifying destiny possible. Was she going to be thrown out of the hive? Was that to be her fate? Only, healers weren't banished, no more than elemental sylphs were. In her entire life, she'd never seen a female sylph banished. Only battlers were banished-for being too weak or too crippled, or for being unappealing to the queen. They were thrown out, forced to live as exiles with no pattern in them at all, scavenging from other hives if they managed to survive at all. But, she wasn't a battler. This shouldn't be happening!

Frightened and cold despite the warmth the fire sylphs brought to the hive, the nameless one made her way down a twisting corridor toward the chamber of the food sylphs, wanting to soothe herself with their calm. But halfway there she pa.s.sed a storage room, and the battler on guard there snapped out at her, hate flaring.

The healer recoiled. He was small, young, nothing the queen would ever look at, but his hate aura still blasted through her and sent her recoiling with a surge of terror. Other battlers arrived, attracted by her fright, but they didn't try to comfort her. Those who didn't ignore her growled as well.

Get out! they snarled.

Why? she wailed. What have I done?

A battler half her size lunged forward, and she twisted over herself to get away. You make the queen angry, he said.

But I've done nothing!

They didn't care. The queen was inviolate though the queen be cruel.

Not understanding, the nameless sylph fled, flitting down a corridor past dozens of sylphs content with their work, all of them knowing just what was expected. The nameless one didn't know that anymore. She was supposed to heal, but she couldn't heal the itching inside of herself, and no one else would let her touch them. Maybe there was something wrong with her. She was over twice the size of the next largest healer and faster by far.

She pa.s.sed another group of battlers, fleeing before they could react and racing outside into the golden light that shone gently down on the hive and its crops. The worst of this was that she could still feel the queen; the pattern link between them was strong, but it felt like it was twisting, distorting. That had to be true, since there was no reason for the queen to ever fear her. What was going on?

Alone and depressed, she made her way across the fields toward the outskirts of the hive territory, just wanting to get away for a while. She wouldn't travel beyond these fields; no sylph did if they could manage it, save battlers on raids, but the borders weren't visited much.

The hive was halfway up a mountain in a mountain range that stretched from end to end for the length of the world, it seemed. The plateau the hive sat on was immense all on its own, enough that she could travel without leaving it until the hive had shrunk in size and was obscured by a faint haze. There the nameless sylph settled down between rows of tall purple plants. Their fruit and leaves were lush and healthy. Moaning miserably, the sylph formed a tentacle and reached out to touch one's smooth surface. Ah, to be a plant. They just got to be what they were, and if they grew larger than everything else, that was seen as a reason for celebration. She moaned again, wanting to go home.

Past the edge of the field, the ground of the plateau turned rocky and sharp, strangled black plants and mosses growing there instead. It dropped with increasing abruptness toward a chasm, a gash in the landscape only a few thousand queen-lengths away. Sometimes things crawled out of that chasm, things that hunted sylph energy. Battlers often went in to kill them before they did. Not all of them came back. Beyond the chasm, the mountain dropped down to distant, forested plains and lakes that were no safer.

No, this wasn't a safe world. Everything out here seemed to want to eat either the sylphs or their crops, and even with their battlers a hive couldn't be sure something wouldn't destroy them. They shouldn't be fighting among one another. The nameless sylph stared at the wild landscape beyond the haven elemental sylphs made so long ago, pondering. If they made her an exile, how was she supposed to survive?

They wouldn't, she told herself. They wouldn't make her an exile. She was a healer, and she'd done nothing wrong. She wouldn't leave!

Something moved among the rocks. The nameless sylph froze, terrified, even more so at the sudden realization that battlers might not come to help at her screams. A shadow slid between two jagged boulders, moving toward her, and she shivered, the itch inside suddenly a hundred times worse.

She braced herself to flee. She was fast after all. More than anyone else in the hive, she was fast.

Lightning flickered, and she blinked half a dozen eyes, partly relaxing, mostly confused. A battle sylph slid out between the rocks, floating slowly toward her. He was big, certainly as large as most of the queen's subordinate lovers, but he hunched low to the ground as though he were trying not to attract attention. His energy pattern was hidden, like a newborn hatchling or . . .

She jumped in realization.

h.e.l.lo, the exile cooed, beautiful.

Adjacent to the queen's underground throne room was a chamber a hundred feet across. The ceiling soared up so high that it erupted out of the ground as a dome of ornate, colored gla.s.s ribbed by arching stone. Sunlight made an interesting ripple effect of glowing hues that shone down into the deepest corners of the chamber, entertaining most of the battle sylphs who currently floated there.

The room was big enough to hold them all, with s.p.a.ce for more to come. In their natural shape, clouds of battlers would group up here, enjoying the camaraderie and relaxation in a place where they didn't have to worry about frightening any people or being bothered. Each of the sylph breeds had a chamber like it, a place where they could go and just be together, with no need to do anything in particular. Most of these sylph chambers were inaccessible to humans, but the battlers preferred a central location and proximity to the queen.

At the moment, ten of the Valley's fifty battlers floated in the chamber, drifting about halfway up in a ma.s.s of cloud and lightning so dense it was hard to make out individual creatures. The closeness was comforting and, in its own way, as important to them as the touch of the women who were their masters.

One sylph floated near the bottom of the ma.s.s and under the shadow of the others, his middle distended by the smaller battler he carried within him. Ril was in his natural shape inside Claw's mantle, kept from unraveling by Claw's energy. Even with his injuries, Ril needed to take this shape from time to time in order to relax, just like all the sylphs, and Claw shuddered at the unwilling memory of decades spent in a single form, not allowed to change until the itch threatened to drive him mad. The discomfort made the sleeping battler inside him shift without waking, so Claw wrapped himself more carefully around Ril, frightened by the thought he might drop his friend.

Half dozing beside him, though Ril was the only one of them who truly needed sleep, Dillon flickered his awareness at Claw.

What? he asked in a grumpy tone.

Nothing. Just a bad thought.

You have too many bad thoughts, Dillon said, though there was no real censure and the battler pressed closer against his flank. Above, other battlers pressed down, all of them warm and content. Claw sighed, his turmoil fading more quickly than it ever did when he was alone. Ril's torpor was soothing to them all.

A footstep sounded on the stone floor below, and all of the battlers turned their attention to the door. This room wasn't off limits, exactly, but the only ones to visit were the queen and their masters. There were benches down there so that the women could sit and visit while their battlers floated, and Claw had a sudden, hopeful thought that it was Rachel come to see him. She did from time to time, though the stairs were very steep and hard for her.

It wasn't Rachel. Sala stepped into the room, looking up at the cloud, and he felt a sudden fear/excitement that was different from his reaction to Rachel, or the queen, or anyone else.

Sala walked underneath their cloud, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, and stared around at the sleek walls. When she turned her head upward, Claw felt another surge. She looked directly at him.

"Claw?"

He shivered, suddenly realizing that he couldn't talk to her in this form, even though he wanted to. He could only speak mentally to other sylphs, the queen, or his master, and he would need to change shape to have vocal cords. To do that, he'd have to drop Ril, who couldn't change from this shape at all without their healer's help. Claw felt a sudden desperate panic that Sala wouldn't understand, that she would leave thinking he didn't want to speak to her.

Dillon pressed close. Give him to me, he said.

Thank you!

Dillon rolled upside down underneath him. The other battlers watched, rapt. Like some sort of bizarre mating, Claw pressed against Dillon as they both opened their mantles at the same time, and Ril slid limply from one down into the other.

Zzwha . . . ? Ril managed, not really awake.

Shh, Dillon soothed, wrapping his mantle around him as gently as Claw would have. Go back to sleep. Then he turned over and rose back up into the cloud.

Claw flashed down to the floor and shifted into human form. Sala regarded him evenly, her head tilted slightly to one side. The foam green of her shawl brought out sparks of emerald in her eyes, and colored light from the dome shifted across her body. Her emotions were calm as always, and her smile was friendly.

"I thought that was you up there," she said. "What were you doing?"

"Oh." He looked up at the cloud to see eight pairs of ball lightning eyes looking down. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, he guided her out into the hall where it was quieter. "I was holding Ril," he said. "I had to give him to Dillon before I could talk to you."

"Why?"

"Oh. Um, he lost part of his mantle." When her eyebrows rose, he had a sudden, panicked need to explain. "Another battler tore it off. He can't change shape without it hurting, and he can't take his natural form without the healer's help."

"I didn't realize battle sylphs could be hurt so badly."

"Oh, yes. Um, I guess we can hurt each other. Not that we would! Hurt each other. Or anyone. Um."

Sala smiled, turning and leading the way along the wide corridor to the auxiliary stairs that led aboveground. Almost no one used the grand main stairs, which had been designed mainly for dignitaries, though these were narrow and steep.

"I was in the area, so I thought I'd drop by and say h.e.l.lo," she admitted. "I can't stay long, I need to get to the school before cla.s.s starts. I'm helping Rachel again today. She's such a sweet woman, I absolutely love her."

Claw smiled, happy to hear that she adored his master as much as he did.

"You're very lucky to have her," she went on. "She must be wonderful to you."

"She is. I was a little crazy when they gave me to her." He shrank into himself. "I'm not, though. Crazy, I mean. Really." He winced, feeling stupid.

She laughed as they climbed the stairs and came out into a square behind a stable. "I know you're not. I'd like to hope we can all be friends," she added. "Me, you, and Rachel."

Claw beamed. "Of course!"

Sala left him there at the top of the stairs, hurrying off to help Rachel set up for the day, but not before she gifted him with a final smile. Claw watched her until she was out of sight, his usual nervous turmoil eased. Someone other than his master seemed to like him just for being him.

Though normally it didn't matter apart from giving a heads-up as to when they were likely to be cranky, battle sylphs could tell when their mortal masters were fertile. Their scents changed in ways that were fascinating, and the battlers stayed close, despite the women's moods. Heyou especially hated to leave Solie when she was fertile, particularly since she didn't turn into a crazy person.

This time, he did.

"Hurry up!" he shouted through the door to Devon's bedroom. "I don't like leaving her alone!"

"Why don't you try leaving me alone?" the man shouted back. "I don't do well under pressure!"

Heyou snorted, pacing across the small apartment. Devon had never bothered to have an earth sylph make him a home aboveground, since he really only used the place to sleep.

Hovering in the air by the window, Airi watched. You frighten him, she said. Heyou frightened her as well. If she had her way, she and Devon wouldn't have anything to do with battlers.

"So?" Heyou couldn't think of anyone more perfect for this than her master.

Galway had reminded him that there was only one thing that could make a woman pregnant, but he also pointed out that there was no rule stating the donor had to deliver the goods personally. Given Heyou's ability to shapeshift, he just needed to get some male seed, and he could perform the conveyance himself. All he needed was a donor.

Devon Chole. Young, healthy, even-tempered . . . and completely terrified of battlers, which meant he wouldn't be sniffing around for any parental rights. Besides, he was leaving in a very short while, and if he was especially thoughtful, he'd never come back. Solie was going to have a baby, and Heyou fully intended to act as the father. He'd seen fathers with their children. They didn't seem to do much, so how hard could it be?

He might not be able to do this if you frighten him too much, Airi supplied.

"What's to be scared of? Hurry up!" Heyou shouted through the door.

The air sylph sighed. Devon doesn't want to be a father.

"Perfect. He won't be. I will."

Are you ready for that?

"Sure. All fathers have to do is yell at their kids and b.i.t.c.h about how they don't behave. Oh, and scare away any suitors who come after them. I'm looking forward to that part."

Oh, Airi said. There was more to it when Devon was a boy.

Whatever. Heyou just wanted Solie to be happy. She wanted a baby, so he'd give one to her.

Does the queen know you're doing this? Airi asked.

"No. She likes surprises." Heyou grinned. "I can't wait to see the look on her face." The smile dropped. "How long does it take for women to figure out they're pregnant?"

Weeks? Maybe months?

"But that's forever!"

An inarticulate sound came from the bedroom, and a minute later Devon opened the door. His hair was a mess and he looked exhausted. "Here," he groused, handing over a clay mug.

Heyou looked inside. "That's it?"

Devon slammed the door.

Heyou shrugged and headed outside. He had what he wanted; now he just had to get to Solie and sweep her off her feet.

Airi watched the sylph go, waiting until he was out of sight before going to console her master. Briefly she thought about warning the queen, but there was a simple rule both she and Devon tried to follow: never to get in the way of a battler that wanted something. It made life much easier.

This also solved any last lingering doubt about going to Meridal. Suddenly, neither of them could wait to leave.

Heyou burst into Solie's garden to find her having biscuits and tea. Lizzy, Loren, and Sh.o.r.e were also there. Solie looked up and gave him her beautiful smile.

"Hi!" Heyou said to her. He looked at the other two women. "Get out."

"Heyou!" Solie protested, but her friends hurried away, sn.i.g.g.e.ring. Heyou's words clearly hadn't offended them. "What's got into . . . ?"

He pounced.