Preserving the Ingenairii (70 page)

Alec clamped down on the leather and held Jeswyne’s hand.
 
He felt the doctor probe at the arrow head, making pain streak across his back and down his arm.
 
Then a blade slipped into the wound, and the surgeon deftly popped the arrow out.
 
Alec bit hard, and grunted, then spit the leather out of his mouth.
 
“Untie my right hand please,” he asked Jeswyne, who undid the strap around his wrist.

He focused through the pain and established his use of healer energy, then placed his hand on the wounded shoulder and knit the flesh back together, leaving only another scar as evidence of his injury.

“That’s remarkable!” the surgeon said, lifting the cloth further away to inspect the instantaneous repair.

“I’ll be back,” Alec said quickly, and before anyone could speak, he translocated himself back to the Scarle compound, returning to the top of the staircase.
 
A man was just inches in front of him when he arrived, and Alec reflexively shoved the startled man down the stairs.
 
“Where is Kirill?” he shouted.
 
He pulled out a knife and threw it at a guard in the hallway, then ran down the stairs and through the trap he had been caught in before. He stepped over the empty net and looked around the room.
 
It was an office, with another door on the far side, and Alec leapt over to that door, and stood there surveying the room beyond.

Kirill was there, bent over a desk with four other members of the Scarle clan.

“All of you must either lie down on the floor and surrender to the justice of emperor Sergey, or suffer the consequences,” Alec shouted at them.
 
He held a knife in one hand and a sword in the other.

Kirill looked at Alec, and this time there was fear in his eyes.
 
“Delay him!” the leader shouted to the others and began to run towards another door.

Alec threw his knife, pulled out another and threw it as well, planting a blade in each of Kirill’s legs.

“Hit the floor or you’re next!” Alec shouted, pulling out another knife and advancing.

The four men simultaneously lay down on the floor, and the only sound was Kirill’s whimpering.
 
Alec walked over to him, withdrew the knives, and roughly healed the legs.

“Stay right here.
 
I’ll be back, and will catch anyone who tries to leave,” he ordered.
 
He grabbed Kirill in a wrestling lock and transported him to the armory in the palace.

“Move him out of the way.
 
I’m going to bring you four more,” Alec instructed, as he pushed Kirill towards a guard.
 
He translocated back to the office where one of the four men was starting to rise to his knees.

“You’ve just volunteered to be next,” Alec said, and pulled him through a translocation, along with the other three men in the office, all
safely
removed to the armory within a minute’s time.

Commander Anatoli arrived in the armory at the same time as Alec brought back the last of the Scarle leaders.
 
He sent a messenger back to the cottage to inform them that Alec was present and finished with his task.
 
“You were a bit hasty there, weren’t you, my lord?”
 
He asked Alec.

“I knew what needed to be done, and I wasn’t in the mood to miss the opportunity,” Alec answered.

“I would like to see the faces of the courtiers here in the empire if they ever had a ruler like you,” Anatoli laughed.

“Now, we want to get the pretender to the throne, right?” Alec asked.

“Are you ready to do that today?” Anatoli asked.
 
“Our restorers have limits on how many trips they can make in a day.
 
I just wondered if the same was true for
you?
”

“I don’t know,” Alec admitted.
 
He stopped to think about all that he had already done, using Warrior power, Healer powers and Translocator powers.
 
“Can Mikhail get away from his castle if we don’t go after him today?”

“Not if we send troops to surround the castle,” Anatoli replied.

“You mean that hasn’t been done yet?
 
Why not?”
Alec asked, annoyed at the failure to take such a simple step.

“His majesty hasn’t ordered us to,” Anatoli told him.

“Can I order you to?
 
I’m a king,” Alec responded immediately.
 
“Of course, technically I’m at war with you,” he admitted with a grin.

“Well, yes, perhaps we need someone with a little more legitimacy to do this,” Anatoli replied.

“I’ll go talk to the emperor and see what we can get accomplished,” Alec offered, deciding not to exercise his powers any further.

Before he could do so however, Jeswyne arrive.
 
“Your majesty, may we talk?” she asked sweetly.

“This won’t be good,” Alec confided in Anatoli.

“No, your majesty,” he agreed.

“Would you walk me to see your father?” Alec asked Jeswyne, and the two of them left the armory holding hands.

“You know,” a senior officer told Anatoli, “with those two on the throne, I think the Dominion will be a very interesting place to live in the next few years.”

“After we declare peace, maybe you and I can transfer there for a while,” Anatoli replied.

“You think there’ll be peace?” the officer asked.

“Do you doubt it, looking at those two?” Anatoli grinned.

Those two walked down a hallway, and then out into the garden.
 
“Is this the way to see your father?” Alec asked.

“Not directly,” Jeswyne replied.
 
“It feels refreshing to be the one in the know for a change,” she reflected.
 
She sat down on a bench in the sunshine, with tall hollyhocks and snapdragons creating a colorful screen around the seat.

“Alec,” she said and paused momentarily, “Alec, should you really have gone out of the cottage like that without telling me you were leaving, or giving me a kiss?”

“Well, perhaps a kiss would have been a good idea,” Alec agreed.
 
“But I didn’t want to offend the imperial sense of propriety,” he quickly added.

“That was after everyone heard you say you were in my bedroom last night,” Jeswyne reminded him.

“Well, you know, that was
the delirium of the pain
,” Alec breezily explained, enjoying the jousting taking place.

“We will hope so,” Jeswyne agreed, and forgot her next objection as Alec inched closer and began to kiss her.

There was a cough.
 
“How do you manage to cough and kiss at the same time?” Alec asked dreamily.

“That wasn’t my cough.
 
It was my mother’s,” Jeswyne replied, sitting up straight.

“You majesty,” Alec said, abruptly rising to recognize the Lady Jessandra.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she began.
 
“Truly I am.
 
I was young once, you know.
 
I thought you should come see your father, and I heard that you got lost on your way, so I set out to find you.

“Jeswyne dear, I hardly need to say it, but I will anyway.
 
You have grown so amazingly beautiful while you were away.
 
I’m sure every mother thinks that, don’t they?
 
But don’t you think she’s a real beauty?” Jessandra asked Alec as they began to stroll.

“As it happens, I do think she’s pretty.
 
And I remember thinking she seemed rather plain the first time I saw her,” Alec spoke without thinking.

“Did you now?
 
Really?
 
How fascinating,” Jeswyne replied, and Alec winced at the tone he heard in those brief words.

“We’ll have to spend so much time planning a wedding.
 
You’re going to be bored silly,” the empress changed the subject to Alec’s relief.

“What was your first engagement ceremony like, Alec?” Jeswyne asked him.

“You are married already?
 
Is it your custom for a young man to have more than one wife?” Jessandra asked with concern.

“My first fiancée passed away from illness,” Alec replied.
 
“And Jeswyne
,,
we never really had a ceremony.
 
We announced our engagement, and then there was the war and the demon, and you know my story.

“So far though, we’ve limited our sovereign to one wife at a time.”

“So far?
 
That’s not going to change,” Jeswyne interjected.
 
“Unless, of course, a queen may have more than one husband?”

“Here we are.
  
I’m sure you two will want to continue this fascinating discussion in private,” the empress said as they passed through the private residential wing and entered the emperor’s study.

“Your highness, it is a pleasure to see you again,” Sergey stood up as Alec and Jeswyne entered the room.

“And likewise, I’m honored to see you again,” Alec replied.

“Oh papa,” Jeswyne hugged him.
 
“Don’t be so formal.
 
It’s just Alec.
 
He thought I was plain, you know.
 
I’m his charity case,” she giggled at her own humor.

“The emperor looked puzzled.
 
“He can hardly say you are plain, and he wouldn’t have come all the way from the Dominion to fight a demon for you if he thought that.
 
It’s not true at all; when you left here several weeks ago, he might have been able to say that, but not now.”

Jeswyne looked nonplussed, and missed the wink her father gave Alec.

“Your majesty, I would like to ask that you formally order troops to surround the castle where your brother is residing.
 
If you can keep him trapped in that location today by acting immediately, tomorrow we’ll be able to go into the castle and take him out,” Alec pressed his case.

“Aren’t we supposed to try to get the leaders from Scarle clan as well?” the emperor asked.

“We already have,” Alec replied.
 
“We captured Kirill and several associates earlier today.”

“Alec did it for you,” Jeswyne proudly added.

“Well, I suppose I owe you something for that, not to mention my gratitude for offering to take Jeswyne off my hands,” the emperor said.
 
“I wanted to return to last night’s subject,” he continued, ignoring the small slap his daughter administered to his shoulder.
 
“Your proposal for a peace treaty and a retreat.”

“You can imagine that it would be a most delicate matter to give up the territory we have gained over the past twenty years of battle,” Sergey pointed out.

“And yet, you’ve already given up more territory in the past six months than you have left.
 
Not to mention next week,” Alec replied.

“What about next week?” Sergey asked.

“I’ll be back with my army in battle next week,” Alec answered, “if we don’t have a settlement by then.”

“What about the wedding?” Jeswyne asked.

“Just tell me what day we’re holding it, and I’ll be here,” Alec assured her.

“What terms are you willing to accept in a peace treaty?” Sergey decided to return to the topic at hand.