Queen of the Sylphs (2 page)

Several passersby started to speak, perhaps to say hello, but they stopped when they saw the look in his eye and Claw at his heel. Mace felt their fear and kept going.

His mark was easy to catch, having to push his way through the crowd that parted for the battlers, but the sylphs held back, instead just following. It was not yet time. One of the queen’s rules was that they not attack on instinct. They needed a reason. Not much of one, perhaps, but a reason nonetheless. The man reached the end of the wide road and headed into a square. Everything from food to tools to jewelry was being sold here, but the man didn’t care. Mace didn’t either. Above, a battle sylph named Wat perched on the edge of a building.

He feels like he’s looking for something,
Claw sent to Mace.

Yes.
The man did, and it was nothing these merchants were selling. The stranger stared at the faces of the women he passed, and Mace could feel his annoyance: He wasn’t finding what he wanted, and his determination was veering toward violence. He felt like a predator, and Mace let a low growl escape his throat.

A little girl toddled out of the crowd. She grabbed Mace’s leg, beaming up at him. “Play with me!” she cried, her happiness a dizzying salve.

Mace scooped the girl up, tickling her under the chin. He passed her to Claw, ordering,
Take her to her mother.
The woman was not far away. She was one of the original Community members, there since the Valley was settled, and her emotions were content, trusting the battlers with her child.

As Claw hurried over to the smiling woman, Mace turned back to his target—and found him nowhere in sight, lost in the emotions of an excited, happy crowd watching a street performer with a dozen juggling balls. Mace snarled, looking around and reaching out with his senses. A moment later he glared up at Wat on the rooftops.

Where?
he demanded.

The battler, dark-haired, slim, and gorgeous by any human standard, stared right back.
Huh?

Mace growled and shifted, dropping the human shape he’d chosen years before and returning to his original form of dense black smoke. He had swirling eyes of ball lightning and teeth of pure electricity. Black, drifting wings spread out, and he rose dozens of feet in moments. People who saw him screamed in fright, even those who knew him. Some of those screamed even louder. Battlers only took this shape to travel long distances—or to attack.

Mace had no proof, but he knew exactly where his quarry was headed. Determined, violent, searching for a woman; not expecting to find her in the market but watching regardless, just in case . . .

He rose higher and confirmed his suspicion. On the other side of the square was another road that led eventually to a stone building, its walls as thin and delicate as candy floss, its windows tall with colored glass. It rose high in the air, a creamy white tower. Wide stairs led to great double doors, both open as they always were when the queen held court. Mace spotted the stranger already nearing the stairs just inside, since the building itself was nothing but a front for a grand stairwell into the underground complex below the town.

He roared.
PROTECT THE QUEEN.

His call was a command to every sylph, whether battler or otherwise. The battlers answered, immediately taking to the air. The other sylphs shrieked, changing forms to escape, many dragging their human masters to safety. Those Valley dwellers without sylphs saw the others retreating, heard the battlers roar and fled themselves, all hurrying to stairwells at the corners of each square. These also led into the corridors below. Strangers to the Valley didn’t know to follow, but Mace didn’t care, not anywhere near as much as he cared about the safety of the human queen who was master to them all.

The interloper froze at the foot of the stairs, staring up at Mace in fear—at all of the battlers, while others rose behind him and created a storm many layers high. The doors to the tower closed, sealed shut by the touch of an earth sylph, and Mace opened his jaws wide, hissing. He couldn’t speak in this form, could only project his voice to other sylphs, his master, or his queen. He projected to her now.

There is danger, Solie. A man has come to kill you. We have him.

Don’t kill him
, she sent back immediately.
Bring him to me
.

Mace hated it, but he obeyed.

Chapter One

She was a small, slim, redheaded girl only twenty-three years old, but as the queen of Sylph Valley, Solie was the most powerful woman alive. Most of the time, she didn’t feel that way. She did feel like a leader, though. She spent her days doing paperwork, organizing the development of the Valley, and trying to convince the other kingdoms to get over their fear and enact formal trade agreements—or at least not go to war with them.

Dressed in a long gown of silk the same blue as the uniforms the battlers wore, she rose from her throne, shaped from stone by an earth sylph to be beautiful but still comfortable, and descended the dais stairs to the polished floor. Her reflection strode beneath her and Heyou bristled at her side, his feelings obvious even if she weren’t able to feel them. His anger was no different than that of every single battler and elemental sylph in the room, or that of the humans here.

Heyou was specifically hers, the battler who bonded to her and made her queen. When they first met, he’d made himself look like a boy. As she’d aged, he’d aged his appearance as well. Now he looked very much like a man, though he was still not much taller than her own five feet two inches. And he was still the same Heyou: immature and devoted, and determined to protect her. Still, with twenty sylphs in the room, Solie didn’t exactly feel any danger.

Her erstwhile assassin knelt on the floor, Mace twisting his arm behind his back. Solie didn’t ask the battler to release his grip. Mace would be upset by that, and he wasn’t actually hurting the man. She knew he wanted to. If it hadn’t been for her order, the assassin would already be dead.

She studied the stranger. He seemed perfectly ordinary, sweat dripping down his dirt-streaked face. He smelled of travel, like many men who came to town, and he stared at the floor in silence. Once, she would have thought him an ordinary soul frightened into silence, but not now. Not anymore.

Solie was still human, for all her sacred status with the sylphs; she wasn’t an empath. But one of the advantages of being a sylph’s master was that she could feel the emotions they projected. And while a normal master could feel only what their own individual sylph did, Solie as queen could feel the emotions of any of her sylphs, and they could project to her anything they picked up from others. Thanks to that, she could nearly feel this man’s mind churning as he tried to think his way out of his predicament.

He had indeed come to kill her. Once, that would have frightened her terribly, but Solie had spent six years as queen and she wasn’t the naive little girl she’d once been. Neither circumstances nor her advisers had let her be.

She glanced over at Devon Chole, wishing that he wasn’t the only one of her three advisers currently in the Valley, but Thom Galway was off in the woods, as he often was, and Leon was across the ocean, searching for his kidnapped daughter. Devon was far younger than either, being only five years older than herself. Still, he had a good heart and a great liking of people, and he’d been a true asset to her. He arranged her social schedule and audiences, somehow always able to figure out who needed to see her and when, and how to manage her time so that she was able to do all the things she had to. He also protected her time for herself and Heyou.

Devon wore the same blue uniform as the battle sylphs, but the gold piping on his coat was greatly diminished. The last thing Solie wanted was for someone to think he was a battle sylph and challenge him to a fight. It had happened before. The only reason anyone survived was because she’d ordered it.

Leon wore the same suit as Devon when he was working, but he could defend himself. Galway couldn’t be bothered. The old trapper hadn’t sworn himself to her like Leon and Devon had, either. Not that it mattered. However he’d learned what he knew, the man was a great source of information on how to set up an economy and make it work. He had seven children living in his house, three of them not his. He knew how to make successful compromises.

For now, though, however competent her other advisers were, Solie only had Devon and a great number of angry battlers.

“Do you recognize him?” she asked.

Devon eyed the man uncertainly, thinking. In the still air of the audience chamber, his hair moved as his invisible air sylph tossed it around.

“Do
you
recognize him, Airi?” Solie asked the playful little creature.

I’m not sure,
the sylph sent.
I don’t think so.

“I don’t think so either,” Devon admitted, hearing his sylph as easily as Solie. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.” He shrugged and whispered, “If he’s from Eferem, Leon would know.”

Solie made a face. Leon had been King Alcor’s head of security and lead battler master. He’d also nearly been her assassin, himself. He’d got a lot closer to success than this one.

She stared deep into the assassin’s heart. Seeing the resentment, she doubted he’d ever turn out to be one of her closest friends the way Leon had. Either way, she had to decide what to do with him. For the battlers, it was simple: kill him. But Solie couldn’t do that. It wasn’t just that she’d been raised kind and nonviolent, killing him would be too easy. She didn’t need Devon and the others to warn her that such methods led to corruption.

“Who are you?” she asked instead.

The man looked up at her. “N-no one,” he stammered. “I’m just a traveler. I don’t understand!”

He did, though. Solie could feel it. He knew exactly why he was there. He still wanted to see her dead, and the urge was only stronger now that he’d been taken. Too easily, he seemed to feel. He’d been taken too easily. He really didn’t understand how battlers worked. No one who lived in a place that bound sylphs to slavery ever did.

Solie wasn’t going to tell him. “You’re lying,” she snapped. “You’re not a traveler, you’re an assassin.”

He gave no physical response, just stared at her in seeming confusion, but his insides flared with anger. Which just proved she was right.

She turned her gaze to Mace, who was watching her over the prisoner’s head. He could hold the man forever, so she could take her time with this interrogation.

“You’re lying,” she said again. She looked back at the assassin. “Are you from Para Dubh?” It would be bad if he were. She really didn’t want them to be enemies. The kingdom of Para Dubh on their eastern border had signed a trade agreement with them, encouraging the sale of certain goods in return for Sylph Valley’s ore, but they hadn’t officially acknowledged Solie. Yed, far to the south, still ignored them while trying to increase their army, even as merchants from there regularly came through. According to her battlers, most of them were spies. The kingdom of Eferem was right on their southern border, and King Alcor hated everything she stood for. She wondered if her would-be killer was from there. West were impassable mountains while north was nothing but ice and snow. Just worrying about the south and the east was enough for her.

No emotional reaction. The man was tense, waiting to see what she said next and still figuring a way out of this. He had no idea how much he was giving away.

“I’ve never been there,” he said.

“What about Yed? Are you from Yed?”

He nodded, licking his lips in feigned nervousness. “Yes. I came up with a caravan. Is that illegal?”

He was lying. Solie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying again. You’re from Eferem.”

Fear shot through him, confirming her suspicions.

“You’re from Eferem,” she continued. “King Alcor sent you to kill me.”

The more she spoke, the surer she was. She was also angry, if not surprised. Solie had actually been born in a hamlet only a few miles away from the capital, and she’d been taken for a sacrifice used to trap a battler. Her death had been meant to bind Heyou to Alcor’s only son, but the prince ended up dead and Solie as Heyou’s master—the first woman ever to link with a battler. It was when they’d become intimate that she’d become a queen. Alcor had tried to have her killed and lost five battlers. The only reason he hadn’t attacked again was from fear. He had six battlers left; she had over fifty.

But, Leon had taught her that there were other ways to cripple a country than outright war. Whether he’d thought of it himself or someone finally suggested it to him, Alcor had just tried one.

“Are there more of you coming?” she demanded, her attention so focused that she wasn’t aware of Devon watching her or the preening, proud looks of her battlers. She didn’t want war with Eferem, but she wasn’t so childish as to think she could ignore an enemy. Not anymore. If they didn’t come after her again, who would they try to hurt next? How much damage could they do?

The assassin stared at her, his eyes wide. He finally realized she knew what he was feeling. Or probably he thought she was reading his mind. She saw—
felt
—him shudder and try to draw within himself so as not to give any more away.

It was too late. While sylph empathy could be fooled and someone with their emotions under control could slip by even battlers, it took tremendous skill. This man didn’t have it. In moments, Solie knew there were more assassins coming.

“How many?” Alcor sent two battlers to kill her once, and when that hadn’t worked, he sent three more and an army. “Two? Three? Four?” She stared into the captive’s ashen face. His brown eyes were dilated and wide, irises surrounded by white. “
Four
more assassins?” She glanced at Mace. “There are four more of them.”

Mace growled and she heard a call go out. Battlers roared outside and she felt their hate wash over the town. They were only allowed to do that in protection, but the hive was definitely threatened. Was she the only target?