Elvenbane (49 page)

“Here,” she said. “Don’t lose this. The cabinet
here
only works one-way, but the one at the Council building won’t know where to send you home if you don’t have this with you.”

Obediently, he pocketed it, and she pulled the door open for him. There was just barely enough room inside for two.

“Get in,” she said, and followed him, closing the door after herself and giggling when he tickled her playfully.

They returned at nightfall, and Mero handed her out of the cabinet with a great deal of gallantry, but none of the playfulness he’d shown earlier. The room had been made ready for their return; lights burning, and the curtains drawn as she preferred them. She broke the illusion on him with that touch, and his face shimmered and changed as she allowed him to resume his core-illusion, of full humanity.

He looked at her thoughtfully, and she smiled. He smiled back, but didn’t say anything, and Triana gathered that the Council session had really opened his eyes to the reality of elven politics—and the strength of Lord Dyran.

The subject that had been before the Council was a dispute between two of the lesser lords—one which seemed simple on the surface, but involved the prestige and welfare of at least a half dozen Council members. And the rest, of course, had bets riding on the outcome. Insofar as she had been able, Triana had kept up a running commentary on exactly who was involved with what, who was being betrayed, who was likely to turn his coat if the tide turned against him. Dyran, who, as always, was covering both sides without either side knowing that he was, controlled both halves of the conflict with a masterful hand.

If Mero had to pick a day to visit the Council, this was a good one, she thought with satisfaction, as she had Mero take a seat, and summoned a servant to fetch them a late meal. Not like the day they spent arguing over trade quotas and the Council tax on oat harvests.

She felt a little light-headed, and recognized the symptoms for what they were. “If you don’t mind, Mero,” she said, breaking into the young halfblood’s reverie, “I’m going to go change. I’ll be right back.”

He kissed her hand as she stood, and she gave him a dazzling smile before turning away and going out the study door.

She didn’t really want to change; she wanted to reinforce the glamorie, and for that she needed one of the talismans in which she had stored power. Besides creating the illusion for Mero, the transport-cabinet used
her
energy for the actual transportation, and she was depleted. But no matter how depleted she was, one thing she would never do was to allow any of the slaves to handle her talismans. That would be inviting disaster. You never knew when one of them might have enough residual wizard-power and will left to use the stored energy of the talisman to counter the spells on his collar.

She wouldn’t run; it wasn’t dignified. But she hurried her steps as much as she could without running, her heels echoing in the white marble hall, and let herself into her room without any fanfare. There was no one there, which was just as well. She tried not to let anyone know where she kept her talismans, not even the lowest of the slaves.

She took the key from around her wrist and unlocked the appropriate drawer of her white-lacquered jewel cabinet, and looked through her talismanic jewelry until she found the necklace of amber that matched her creamy-gold gown. She slipped it on over her head hurriedly, and immediately felt better, less as if she were reduced to a mere wisp of herself. Being depleted always made her feel as if she were likely to blow away on the next breeze.

She returned to Mero, her steps echoing confidently up the hall. She thought she heard male voices somewhere ahead, and didn’t give it a second thought. But as she approached the door, she heard the sound of a splintering crash, and the
thud
of two bodies on the floor.

Ancestors! What on earth? Who would dare
—

She flung the door open, just in time to see Mero receive a kick in the ribs that sent him flying into the wall, taking one of her little carved-birch chairs with him. The chair did not survive the impact. Mero did, but not well.

Triana whirled, her power rising within her, to confront Mero’s assailant. A huge, muscular, dark-haired man stalked past her, ignoring her presence and advancing on Mero with blood-lust in his eyes. She recognized him with surprise. It was a human named Laras, one of her stable, a slave who had been intended for the gladiatorial ranks before she had taken him for her own purposes. If he had been a little brighter, she might have elevated him to be Rafe’s replacement, but his dim-wittedness ruled that out. Nevertheless, he seemed to regard himself as her favorite. He had always been inclined to jealousy, and his fits of temper were violent and notorious among the slaves, but she had never seen him lose his control so completely.

For a moment, her blood and heartbeat quickened. She was being fought over! It was like the old days, when elven lords dueled for the favor of a chosen lady. But that was long ago—long before elves came here, to this world.

How exciting—they were fighting for
her’!
She didn’t know of anyone who’d had men fight over her—

But then, as she took in the damage that had been done so far (two broken chairs, a ruined table, and most of the ornaments smashed), her anger awoke. Laras had broken conditioning and training, and he was in the process of destroying her property. This was not to be tolerated. Even if it had been caused by jealousy over her—

She stepped into the room, her power tingling at her fingertips.

“
Laras
!” she shouted—
her
voice evidently penetrated the fog of rage that enveloped him, and he began to turn. When he saw that it was really her, he started to smile.

She ignored the smile. “You’ve been a very bad boy, Laras,” she said coldly. “I’m going to have to make sure you never do this again.”

As Laras winced, and his eyes darted frantically from one corner to the other, looking for a place to hide, she acted. Before she could change her mind, she called combat-fire and burned him to ashes where he stood.

She was merciful. He didn’t even have time to scream.

Now, too late to stop the fight, other slaves came running; they arrived at the door just in time to see her punish Laras for his presumption, and most of them shrank back from her as she leveled an angry gaze at them. No one made the mistake of trying to run; that would be tantamount to a confession of guilt. And a suicidal move, given the temper she was in now.

“Who allowed this to happen?” she snarled, knowing very well that no one was going to answer. She raked them all with her eyes, and had the satisfaction of seeing them blanch. There had been times when she had punished
everyone
for misdeeds, and not just the guilty party. She was tempted to do just that right now, and reinforce the lesson in obedience she had just delivered.

But—there was another witness. She dared not give in to her anger around Mero. Not when she was trying to impress him with her charm and gentleness.

“See that the room is clean and refurnished,” she ordered, knowing that everyone within hearing would leap to do just that. Her tempers were too unpredictable to take a chance with. “And see that everyone on the estate hears about this. I have no wish to see a repetition of this incident.”

She picked one servant at random and directed him to see to Mero. He scuttled to the halfblood’s side and helped him sit up. She stood by with a look of assumed concern while the slave checked Mero for injuries.

Fortunately for the halfblood, Laras had not even begun to punish him. All his hurts were superficial, and the slave helped him to his feet. Triana was a little gratified at his reaction of shock and nausea—it gave her a little thrill of power, but she didn’t want that particular reaction to last. She took his arm as soon as the slave released him, and reexerted the glamorie, striving to wind him back to his former state of bemused contentment. He must come to see this as
her
protecting
him
from a slave who was crazed, an irrational man who could not be reasoned with.

She didn’t even have to say anything; she just cooed over him and wove her magic, and before she returned him to his quarters for rest, he was as glassy-eyed as ever.

He was more than beglamored, she thought contentedly. He was half in love with her. This was going to work out very well—especially if she could figure out how to get rid of Valyn and the other two. Permanently, if possible. And soon.

Keman paced the hardwood floor of his enormous, luxurious room, and fretted. From time to time he glanced out the window, but the view of the ethereal lighted gardens gave him no answers.

Nothing was going right. Shana spent all her time in the library, and when she did come out, he got the feeling that she was hiding something from him. Valyn seemed to have lost all of his earlier fervor for the cause of humans and halfbloods, and acted as if he wasn’t quite sure where he belonged anymore. And Mero—Mero was totally changed. He paid no attention to Shana, he was no longer practicing combined magics, only elven ones, and Valyn had confessed that he wasn’t even confiding in his cousin anymore. And it was all the fault of that Triana—

She was trying to split them up, Keman thought desperately, kicking aside a footstool covered in emerald velvet. She was trying to make the group fall apart, and she was working on Mero as the weakest of the lot.

Keman had tried to wake him up; had tried to make him see what Triana was up to, but he had dismissed the dragon’s attempts at reason with a shrug. He wouldn’t even argue the point. He just ignored it.

Finally Keman had tried to distract Triana from her goal by making a play for her himself. I
thought it would be easy
, he recalled ruefully.
After all, she had all those men
—
she should have been willing to go after anything that looked good, right
? He’d thought that when Mero saw her casting him aside for a new conquest, his friend would see what the elven woman was really like. He had brought her presents, tried to engage her in conversation when she was plainly on her way to a meeting with Shadow, and did his level best to charm her. But all he really knew of mating were dragon-courtship ways.

He flushed at the memory of his clumsy attempts at seduction. The approaches a dragon considered subtle—a few presents, which were followed, if they were successful, by the direct question of “Do we mate in the air or on the ground?”—were pretty inept by elven standards.
Triana laughed at me
. He flushed again at the recollection of Triana’s reaction. She didn’t even say “no”—she’d just laughed at him.

It couldn’t have been his disguise—he’d chosen to appear as if he had full elven blood, and he had, in fact, modeled his disguise on several young elven lords thought particularly handsome. It had to have been his manner.

At least he’d amused her. He sighed. He hadn’t done anything
but
amuse her, though. And he hadn’t gotten his message across to Mero. Mero had laughed at him right along with Triana.

He had gone to Valyn then, but it hadn’t done a bit of good except to worry him more. Valyn was helpless where his cousin was concerned.

And Shana was angry. Very angry. He could tell by the way she avoided everyone and everything and kept herself locked away in the library. He surmised that Shadow had said or done something to her that made her angry, but he couldn’t imagine what it was.

And when he asked her what was wrong, she acted as if she didn’t care. Which left him unable to think of any solutions to what was obviously—at least, to him—a problem.

He looked up in startlement from his pacing, as someone walked through the door without even tapping on the frame, then closed it behind himself and stood in the shadows where the light from Keman’s single glow didn’t quite reach. There was no mistaking who it was, though. Keman was surprised to see that his visitor was Mero.

“Keman—have you got some time to spare?” the halfblood asked hesitantly, shifting his weight from foot to foot uncertainly as if he wasn’t sure he was welcome, and giving the dragon a slow, sheepish smile. “I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a mess.”

Keman looked from him to the door, Mero nodded, and turned to lock it behind himself. “That should be sufficient to keep us from being disturbed,” Mero told him. As he turned back, Keman finally noticed the bruises on his face, and instantly surmised from the way he was walking that there were more like them under his clothing.

What—Fire and Rain! Someone had been beating him!

“What happened to you?” the dragon blurted, frozen with shock. Mero limped over to him and looked around for somewhere to sit.

“One of Triana’s old harem decided he didn’t like being put away,” the young man said casually, and eased himself down into one of Keman’s armchairs. “He decided that if I wasn’t around anymore, Triana would come back to her old ways. The Lady disagreed with his approach—and he is even now being shoveled into a very small sack for disposal.”

The young man’s face and hands betrayed the casual tone of his words; his hands were shaking, his face was white, and his expression was set in a patently forced smile.

He looked up at Keman, who was slowly lowering himself into the chair opposite him, and his eyes were dark, and full of something Keman couldn’t read. Pain. And something else. “I never saw an elven lord actually
kill
someone before,” he said forlornly. “I’ve seen them hurt plenty of people, but I never saw one
kill
someone. And she did it the way you or I might squash a bug.”

Keman didn’t know quite what to say, so he waited for Shadow to continue. Finally the halfblood’s shoulders relaxed and he sighed as he sat back into the armchair.

“Elven lords—the fullbloods—they’re really funny that way. They can convince you that they’re feeling something when they’re not, but they
can’t
convince you they’re feeling something when they
are
.”

Keman tried to follow the logic of that sentence. “I don’t understand,” he replied, shaking his head in confusion.