Betrayals (37 page)

“And the right way became something else entirely,” Jovvi finished for him with another nod. “Yes, I not only understand completely, I feel the same way. Everyone here is filled with thoughts of vengeance and violence, and rather than trying to soothe those feelings away, I’m joining in feeling them with everything inside me. Tomorrow we will make plans, but frankly I have no idea what they should be beyond freeing any of our people who are still in Quellin.”

They were interrupted by sounds of satisfaction coming from all around, and Lorand suddenly realized that the dampness he’d been feeling for hours and had stopped noticing had abruptly disappeared. Then he saw Valiant standing with two other people, all three of them glancing around in the same direction, and thought he knew what had been done. Valiant had linked with others having Water magic, and together they’d removed every bit of moisture from the clothing of their group.

“Bless that man,” Jovvi said with a satisfied sigh of her own. “That wasn’t anything like being able to use a bath house, but somehow I now feel a bit cleaner. In the morning, when we’ve all regained our strength, we’ve got to see about getting a bath.”

“There’s something we have to see about before that,” Meerk said, not so much disagreeing as speaking what was uppermost in his mind. “We’ll have to put sentries out close to the road, to let us know the minute our pursuers come in range of their talent.”

“So that we can hide all traces of where we are,” Jovvi said, a faint dissatisfaction now touching her. “It’s too bad there isn’t something else we can do….”

“But there is, and not only can we, but we must,” Meerk said, drawing himself up straighter. “Going up against Quellin is all well and good, but not while a large number of guardsmen are coming up behind us. Before we turn our attention to the enemy ahead of us, we have to completely eliminate the enemy at our backs. No one who knows anything at all about warfare would consider any other course of action.”

Hearing that, Lorand stared at Meerk with an expression that must have suggested the man had two heads. He’d said warfare, as though the word meant more to him than just another word for large-scale fighting. Was it possible that the man actually knew something about it, which the rest of them didn’t? If so, the knowledge might actually make the difference between their winning a battle or two, and their eventually standing victorious over all their enemies….

CHAPTER THIRTY

Jovvi wasn’t sure about how to respond to what Alsin had said, not when his thoughts were so grimly hard. What had happened to the man was something Jovvi had seen twice before, both times in the presence of some sort of traumatic incident. The person involved had usually had many private doubts about what he or she was doing, and the shock of whatever incident reached them was so strong that they began to blame themselves for what had happened. And they accepted that blame without argument, thinking that if they hadn’t clung to their previous opinions then the incident might not have taken place.

In some cases the change was a good thing, but in most it produced a strong fanaticism in the reverse stance which the person adopted. Their previously rejected ideas were now the only thing possible for them to do, and they began to pursue the completion of those ideas no matter who tried to stand in their way. It was true that they all needed to be strong and hard right now, but fanaticism was something else entirely….

“I hadn’t realized that you knew so much about warfare, Alsin,” Jovvi hedged, trying to get a clearer reading of the man. “While we were looking for a safe place to rest, Tamrissa told me that you’d mentioned how unfortunate it was that we had no one who could be considered experienced in actual warfare. We all agreed that that was because the empire wasn’t even supposed to have an army, although now we know it does.”

“I’ve suspected the existence of an army for some time,” Alsin responded, his tone of voice and the tenor of his mind saying again that he now confessed the terrible things he’d done before. “I… happen to be a student of history, military history in particular, and one of the books I read said that no political entity like our empire ever existed in the world without an army, unless it existed alone. And even then there would probably be at least the remnants of the army which caused them to be alone in the world.”

“That makes sense,” Lorand put in with a nod, and Jovvi was glad to see that he sounded supportive and cautiously enthusiastic. “Now that you’ve made the point, I agree that we need to do something about the guardsmen who are coming after us. Even if they simply passed us by and continued on to Quellin, that would do nothing more than reinforce the people we need to go up against.”

“Exactly,” Alsin said with his own nod, now warming to his subject a bit more. “So we have to set up an ambush, and make sure they don’t ever reinforce anyone ever again.”

“You want us to kill them all?” Lorand blurted, and Jovvi could feel the shock in him that the concept had been put that baldly. “But didn’t you say some of your people might be with them? How can you suggest killing your own people?”

“Any guardsman who’s a member of my organization will stand back and refuse to participate in a fight,” Alsin stated, the words very flat. “At least that’s what they all swore to do, just as Grath swore to be loyal to us. If they break their sworn word the way he did, they deserve whatever happens to them.”

“I… see,” Lorand muttered, still taken aback, but Alsin Meerk noticed nothing of that. He clapped Lorand on the shoulder, then looked around.

“People are beginning to bring the blankets and things out of the wagon,” he said, nodding toward the men walking from the back of the barn with their arms full. “That means they’re in the process of stabling the horses, and they’ll need help with that. You and I will have to talk again later.”

Jovvi watched Lorand smile and nod before Alsin turned away, knowing well enough how he really felt. Once Alsin strode off, Lorand put an arm around her and drew her close.

“This isn’t something I have to pretend to be enjoying,” he murmured, looking down into her eyes with a smile. “I’ve needed this since the time before I woke up, but before we go any farther with our personal lives—such as they are—we need to talk. Is he really as bad off as he seems?”

“Alsin is a very disturbed man,” Jovvi replied with a sigh, raising one hand to touch Lorand’s cheek. “I intend to work with him to see if I can help him to pull out of it, but if I can’t we’ll have to be very careful. He isn’t far from suspecting everyone around him of being in league with ‘the enemy,’ and that will come to mean everyone who disagrees with him.”

“Are you really going to check everyone’s true feelings tonight?” Lorand asked, now looking concerned. “I can see how tired you are, which means it might be best to save it for the morning.”

“I wish I could,” Jovvi said, automatically soothing his concern for her. “It isn’t very likely that any of the people with us are really on the opposite side of this, but considering the ruthlessness of the nobility, we can’t afford to take any chances. Let’s find a comfortable place to sit, and I’ll get it over with.”

When he simply nodded and began to look for the place she wanted, Jovvi realized that she loved him more than ever. Another man would have added to her burden by trying to “protect” her, but Lorand simply helped her do what she needed to. There was no certainty that they would survive the coming confrontations with their enemies, but if they did Jovvi knew she would never let Lorand out of her sight and reach again.

An abandoned bale of hay near one of the stalls made a good place to sit down, and Jovvi noticed that others of the group were similarly seated on other bales. After looking at those who were sitting down and those who were up and helping to get them settled, it became clear that those who had been roused first were running out of strength first. Those who hadn’t been awake as long were moving with difficulty, but they were still moving.

Without the Blending entity to help her, Jovvi was only able to do a surface scan of their companions. Those who were Highs in Spirit magic were the hardest, of course, but it quickly became clear that they hadn’t had her training or practice in using their talent. Duplicity, marked by nervousness or smugness, was easy to see, so that was what she searched for. Once she had touched everyone and hadn’t found anything suspicious, she turned her head to Lorand again.

“There isn’t anything overt to find, so that should do it for tonight,” she reported. “Some of them have reservations about being involved in this, but that’s natural enough. Tomorrow we can use the Blending entity to check more deeply, but I’ve had a thought. Are we going to urge these people to form their own fives, and then teach them how to Blend?”

“If you’re worried that giving them the information will put them in jeopardy, don’t forget that they’re already in it,” Lorand pointed out. “If you think instead that they might run wild, I’ll agree that that’s a possibility—if you’ll agree that the choice and opportunity is rightfully theirs. Keeping things from people because they might not handle the information properly is living their lives for them, and no one has the right to live someone else’s life.”

“Not unless they want to end up being just like the nobility, even if only in a small way,” Jovvi agreed. “No, running wild wasn’t what I was thinking about. Training was my concern, as it’s fairly obvious that these people haven’t had much. Well, tomorrow we can discuss it with the others and find out what they think.”

Jovvi had shortened the discussion because she saw Tamma, Rion, and Naran approaching with blankets and waterskins. The three looked almost as tired as Jovvi felt, but their smiles of greeting were warm.

“We’ve taken possession of this big box stall over here,” Tamma said, gesturing with her head as she and the others stopped a few feet short of where Jovvi and Lorand sat. “If you’ll give us a couple of minutes, we’ll have your beds all laid out and ready to get into.”

“Just ours?” Lorand asked, helping Jovvi up before moving forward to give Tamma a hand with her burdens. “What about the rest of you? Unless you’ve found some deep, mystical secret, you need sleep as badly as we do.”

“Oh, we’ll certainly be joining you,” Naran said with a smile and a headshake as Lorand tried to take her blankets as well. “No, thank you, my dear, but these aren’t so heavy that I can’t take them the rest of the way. And you can be certain that Rion and Tamrissa will be using their own beds. Valiant is taking charge of the first watch, Rion will have the second, and Tamrissa the third.”

“Having third watch was my own idea,” Tamma said over her shoulder as she took one of the blankets from Lorand and began to spread it over the relatively clean straw in the stall. “There are two bath houses a short distance behind this barn, equally distant from both rows of three houses, and we’re going to assume that one is for men and one for women. While the Water people are on watch they’ll purify the water as best they can, so that when I and other Fire magic users come on, we can heat it for bathing. If we don’t find those following guardsmen in our laps first thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to have a bath.”

“And I’ll be right there with you,” Jovvi assured her. “We don’t, by any chance, have any clean clothes available, do we?”

Jovvi knew her voice had been wistful, but having clean clothes handy wasn’t very likely. She knew better than most what it was like to be on the run from those who wanted to hurt you, and cleanliness showed up in a very minor position on the list of absolute necessities.

“Our associates don’t have any, of course, but it so happens that we do,” Tamma answered, then laughed at Jovvi’s expression of delighted surprise. “You can thank Naran for that, because she’s the one who packed them while there was still time to do things like that.”

“Don’t thank me until you see what I chose,” Naran denied with a small laugh as Jovvi went over to hug the girl. “I grabbed whatever happened to be handy, so we’ll all probably end up looking as though we were dressed by the color-blind.”

“That’s better than having people think we were dressed by someone without a sense of smell,” Jovvi retorted with her own laugh. “But why are we all standing around here? Let’s everyone make his or her own bed and then lie in them, because come morning we get to bathe!”

Everyone joined the laughter then, but they also did as she’d suggested. The beds were made up rather rapidly with room to spare, then Rion looked around.

“I’m going to speak with Valiant one last time before I retire,” he said, his hand touching Naran’s arm gently and briefly. “It shouldn’t take more than a moment or two, and then I’ll be back.”

“Rion, wait,” Lorand said softly, then turned to Jovvi. “Is he anywhere close enough to hear me?”

“No,” Jovvi replied after a quick look around with her talent, knowing Lorand referred to Alsin Meerk. “He’s still busy with getting all the horses settled in.”

“Good,” Lorand said, then returned his attention to Rion but included Tamma and Naran in on the conversation. “All of you—and Valiant—should know what happened with Alsin Meerk just a little while ago. We may end up having trouble with the man.”

Lorand repeated the discussion as briefly as possible, and when he was through Tamma shook her head while Rion and Naran simply looked disturbed.

“I really hope Jovvi can pull him out of it,” Tamma said, a large portion of her weariness showing through. “I understand that we have to do something about the guardsmen coming behind us, but to think that we should just kill them … I don’t know if I can agree with that. If they were the ones who hanged these families it would be different, but just because they probably wear the same uniforms …”

“I’m forced to agree with Tamrissa,” Rion said, still held by disturbance. “We must consider all our options carefully before we do something rash, and killing without much prior thought is about as rash as it comes. But I’ll take Valiant aside and warn him, and tomorrow we can all discuss it with clear heads.”

After touching Naran’s arm again Rion left, and the rest of them went to the blanket-beds they’d prepared. Lorand had put his right next to Jovvi’s, of course, but the satisfaction of that was dimmed by the thought of what tomorrow might conceivably bring. Jovvi had been able to feel what her groupmates had at the thought of killing, but she remembered something they apparently didn’t: they’d already killed without regret, in that first competition. Being part of the Blending entity seemed to change all of them….