Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron (14 page)

“Now,” the dwarf said, “tell it—”

“Tell it,” interrupted a new voice, “to let the mermaid go and leave the pool as best it can without injuring the mermaid in any way. Now.”

“Yes, master,” said the second golem, and in the pool the first golem obeyed—or tried to.

“And you, Hokk, should know better,” continued Hector Obsidia mildly. He was still wearing his black evening clothes.

Hokk the dwarf spun and jerked into a bow. “My lord,” he quavered. “I was just trying to preserve your property. I didn’t mean—”

“The only reason I’m not sending
you
into that pool to help the golem out,” Hector said thoughtfully, “is that I need you to make more golems.”

“She
is
a beautiful specimen,” Sharlee Obsidia observed, peering into the thrashing water from a safe distance. A stiff breeze rustled her night-black dress, and the leaves on the trees flipped to show their pale undersides.
“Her ailment seems to have cleared completely. Really, I expected something better from Aisa than the old trick of making a slave look sick in order to bring the price down. I do wonder what she poured into the tank, though.”

“Your eye for detail is a delight as always, my love,” said Hector. “However, I have to say that you missed the troll boy’s true eye. He turned it on me in the tavern, and I found it an extremely . . . uncomfortable experience.”

“Darling!” Sharlee was instantly at his side. “What did he say? Did it hurt?”

Hector’s face was a stone. “He said I was rich and that I carried insatiable darkness and hunger inside me.”

“But none of that is news!” Sharlee cried. “That dark ambition is one of the things I love best about you. That and your perfect taste in a wife.”

“I agree with you,” Hector said peevishly. “But it wasn’t his place to
say
it.”

“Oh.” Sharlee took his hand and stroked the back. “Then once we get what we need from him, we’ll crush him.
I
will crush him. For you.”

Hector gave her a fond smile and stroked her hair as the rain fell a little harder. “You always know what to say, my shining star. But now I have to deal with our dwarfish friend.”

Here, Hokk stiffened.

“I think a onetime reduction in salary equal to twice the amount it will cost to fix this golem will be sufficient punishment.” Hector paused, his arm still around Sharlee. “That, and ten lashes by the golem itself, once you’ve finished repairing it.”

“I want to watch,” Sharlee whispered in his ear. “And I want you to watch me watch.”

Hokk the dwarf paled beneath his red swaddling. “But, my lord—”

“Twenty, then,” Hector said amiably. “We’ll watch for the bone to appear. Is there anything else you wish to add?”

“Please do,” murmured Sharlee.

Hokk looked down at the grass. “No, my lord.”

The golem hauled itself uncertainly out of the pool, using one arm and favoring its bad leg. It was followed by the sort of spitting sound a whale might make, and the golem’s arm flew out of the pool to land at the dwarf’s feet. Sharlee turned away from Hector and regarded it thoughtfully.

“Hokk,” she added, “I believe my husband may be persuaded to curtail part of your punishment if you repair the golem by tomorrow morning.”

The dwarf straightened. “Yes, my lady.” He snatched up the arm and led the golem away.

“Now, why did you do that, my dear?” Hector asked. “You said you wanted to watch.”

Sharlee kissed him on the cheek. “You never do learn about people, do you? You must punish with one hand, which makes them fear and loathe you, and with the other hand, you must lighten the punishment, which changes the loathing into love even when the lash falls. In the end, he’ll beg you to beat him. We do need more dwarfs, eventually.”

“Ah! Very good,” Hector said with a clap of his hands. “I should know better than to doubt you, my Sharlee.”

Sharlee patted back a yawn—it had been a long night—and wandered over to the pool. “How long before they come, do you think?”

“They’ll come tomorrow night,” Hector replied. “They’ve found our house by now, and are examining the place as we speak. They’ll snatch a few hours of sleep next, make another trip to see the house in the afternoon,
draw up their plan in the evening, and drop by after sunset.”

“Are you sure they won’t come tonight?” Sharlee said. “I could pop down to the Docks right now and wake Captain Greenstone.”

“That can wait until tomorrow,” Hector assured her. “If Danr were working alone, I might be worried, but we’re talking about a group, and groups tend to be more cautious. It’ll be tomorrow night.”

“Then in the morning we’ll have breakfast out here in the garden by the pool, despite the storm, so we can enjoy the mermaid before she leaves us, and then I’ll go down to the docks. Captain Greenstone won’t need much persuading when I remind her what she owes us.”

The wind rose again. “Never give your enemies a choice,” Hector agreed. “Never do.”

•   •   •

Ranadar, minus the stupid robe, finished his circuit of the house. It was a
big
house, deep within Old City. Old City housed commoners who came from old money and nobility who couldn’t afford the sumptuous Diamond District, which housed the Gold Keep. It was broad daylight, if cloudy, and the street was heavily trafficked—horses with laden carts, wealthy carriages, donkeys with pannier baskets, servants in livery, slaves with bands around their necks or wrists. The noise of clopping hooves and clattering wheels and shouting people swirled about him, mingling with the manure and urine in the streets—no sewers here as there were in Palana. Disgusting. Humans had no idea how to run a city. And was that a troll out in broad daylight? Even with a hat and heavy cloak to protect it from the sun, it thundered through the streets like a falling tree, and everyone ignored it except to get out of the way. Now that the mountains had opened up, Balsia was too
welcoming for its own good. He snorted to himself. Humans tolerated full-blooded Stane in their cities but spat venom at half-bloods. Ranadar wondered if he would ever understand the Kin.

Ranadar pulled the hood of his cloak a little lower and concentrated on keeping the glamour up. This was difficult with all the iron about, but he managed. When people passed him by on the street, they went around him without truly noticing him, the way they might go around a tree in the forest without paying attention to it. This wasn’t true invisibility, but it would do.

The house Ranadar was scouting had three stories and was built of carefully mortared stone, itself surrounded by a high stone wall that took up most of the block. Ranadar failed to understand the need to build with stone. Stone was dead and dull and you could not change it easily. Wood was a much better choice. It had a life and voice and if you listened to it, the wood told you how it wanted to be shaped. Iron was even worse than stone. The awful black metal poisoned everything it touched, and some things it didn’t. Ranadar could feel it everywhere in this human city, dragging at him and sapping his strength. He wasn’t a particularly powerful magician, but he was still used to using at least a bit of glamour here and there, and it was damn hard in this idiotic city the humans had built. Half the time he had a headache, and the other half his stomach felt ready to empty itself on any available surface. He refused to complain, however. Even in exile, he was an elf and a prince, far above petty problems.

Besides, he had Talfi.

Rain came and went, pattering the cobblestones with tiny ant feet before it retreated. Ranadar could feel the tension sliding in from the Iron Sea, taste the salt on the air, sense the water on his skin. When the full storm arrived,
perhaps it would wash away the stink and the manure, at least temporarily. He drifted through the street traffic. In his home forests of Alfhame, he had learned to slip into a herd of deer and wander among them without their notice, a skill many of his own kind had forgotten, and it came in handy here.

Around the front of the house, the house of the Obsidia couple, he abruptly encountered an enormous iron gate. The soap bubble glamour popped, and his gorge tried to come up. A pair of human women gasped at the sudden realization that an elf clad in green and brown had been standing in front of them all the while, and Ranadar turned his head to hide his face as the women bustled away. He swallowed burning acid and crossed the stones to get some distance from the iron.

The gate was wide enough for a pair of carriages. Beside it, a smaller gate was set into the wall so individual people could come and go without having to open the main gate. Through the poison bars, Ranadar glimpsed groomed gardens and perfect lawns—nature beaten into submission. It might as well be dead. Guarding the gate was a pair of golems. That showed real wealth. Only the dwarfs could make golems—tireless, obedient, incorruptible workers who cost twenty times the most expensive slave. They were also highly alert and all but impossible to sneak past.

Ranadar chewed his lip thoughtfully. According to the mayor, this was the Obsidia house, and the mermaid lay beyond that imposing iron. Ranadar had no feelings about the mermaid one way or the other. But the mermaid was important to Aisa, and
that
made her important to Ranadar. Aisa and Danr had been instrumental in bringing Talfi back to life after the Battle of the Twist, so if they wanted to rescue the mermaid, Ranadar would help rescue the mermaid. If Danr and Aisa wanted Ranadar to swim to the
South Pole to hunt diamonds in the ice, Ranadar would do it. That was more than a little frightening—he was used to giving orders rather than taking them—but the exhilaration of having Talfi was utterly worth it.

Ranadar kept the memory of the first time he had met Talfi close inside him like a wyrm guarding gold treasure. Talfi had been a new slave in the palace, one among several, and Ranadar had been given the task of touching each one and infecting them with glamour, the addiction that made humans adore their elven owners and give them their utmost loyalty. Talfi stood before Ranadar in bronze shackles, his eyes downcast, and Ranadar lifted his chin so he could better look into Talfi’s eyes. He had expected to meet fear, resignation, or perhaps even defiance, but when this slave’s sky-blue eyes met his, Ranadar found . . . intrigue. That, and an open interest that went through Ranadar like a hot poker. Ranadar inhaled sharply.

“What . . . what is your name, slave?” he stammered.

“Talfi,” the slave said, and the word rolled over Ranadar like silken thunder.

“Talfi,” Ranadar repeated. “You are . . . mine.”

And instead of sighing or weeping or begging, as most slaves did, Talfi only grinned a grin that made the skies open wide. “As you wish, my lord.”

Eventually, Ranadar took Talfi on as his personal body slave, and they were rarely apart. Talfi became Ranadar’s
Talashka
, and Ranadar became Talfi’s uppity elf, but only when no one could hear.

They still had to be circumspect. Elves could keep human playthings, but actual emotion toward one was considered filth. Unfortunately, as a prince who normally did as he pleased, Ranadar was unused to keeping secrets. His father even tried to warn him once. One spring while they were standing on the shore of Lake Nu, Father pointed to a
swarm of insects and said, as if in idle conversation, “Look at the mayflies there. They hatch, mate, and die, all within a single day, while we remain behind. And some of them—” As if on cue, a trout rose from the depths and gulped down a number of flies at once. “—die prematurely. That is a pity indeed, especially for those left behind to watch.”

Ranadar ignored the hint. He could not imagine a world without Talfi, and therefore such a world could not exist. One cool spring night, Talfi whispered that he could not imagine a world without Ranadar, either, and their hearts became forever one. They were young and they both knew with every fiber of their beings that love would find a way around even death.

Only a week later, the door to Ranadar’s rooms banged open and both Father and Mother strode in like a pair of thunderheads. Behind them flitted a glowing sprite named RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky. Ranadar leaped out of bed, outraged and frightened, leaving Talfi tangled in the bedclothes behind him.

Father seized Talfi by the hair and yanked him naked out of the bed. Talfi, unable to resist the touch of an elf, dropped to the floor. “RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky overheard you talking, Ranadar,” Father snapped. “This human called you
uppity
, and you used a term of endearment with him in return. Is that true?”

“True blue, who knew?” giggled RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky.

Ranadar opened his mouth to lie, then felt the truth glamour settle over him. Father was a powerful magician, and he had RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky to feed him power. Ranadar tried to fight the truth, but the power was too strong.

“It is true,” his mouth said.

Mother’s lips tightened and the tendons on her neck stood out. Father sighed. “Do you love him,
Ranashka
?”

The word caught Ranadar off guard, as did Father’s expression. Father had shown Ranadar no real affection for more than forty years now. The unexpected gesture broke Ranadar’s resistance, and words came out in a rush.

“I do, Father, and he loves me. It is the truth.”

“Truth of youth, in sooth,” said RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky.

“You know that in no time at all he will grow into a decrepit old creature,” Mother said, “with rheumy eyes and wrinkled skin and spotted hands and clawed fingers and shriveled organs. And that he is not Fae, with no real thoughts or feelings of his own.”

“That is not the truth,” Ranadar said. He looked down at Talfi, his
Talashka
, who was kneeling uncertainly on the wooden floor. “Talfi thinks and feels just as I do. And we will deal with the problems of age when the time comes.”

Father nodded once. “Perhaps it is best to deal with it now.”

In one quick move, he drew a bronze knife, pulled back the unresisting Talfi’s head, and slashed his throat. Before Ranadar quite understood what was happening, Talfi was falling to the floor, clutching at his neck in a growing puddle of blood. He looked at Ranadar with sky-blue eyes, shuddered hard, and died.