The Destroyer Book 3 (38 page)

The empress let out a loud and mirthful laugh. It came from her belly and echoed in her shoulders and throat. After almost ten seconds of her laughing the rest of her kind seemed to realize that she wasn't upset. Then the tension in the room returned to what it was before I made my vulgar comment.

"You are quite bold, Kaiyer." The empress finally sucked in enough air to get a phrase out of her pretty mouth. Her laughter did sound pleasant, like Nadea's, but a few pitches higher and of a clearer timbre. The Elvens facing me seemed to relax at Telaxthe's words. Those seated leaned back onto their cushions. The guards at the sides of the tent lowered their small crossbows and exhaled with obvious regret. Isslata set her thick bladed sword down on the wood planks of the pavilion and gave me an exasperated look before she smiled the way she did when she was in the mood to rip my clothes off and fuck me.

"I can see why Isslata enjoys you." Telaxthe must have noticed the gaze Isslata gave me. The other generals turned to glance over at Alatorict's commander, but she didn't break eye contact with me or seem intimidated by their attention.

"I find it odd how you have created unique relationships with some of our warriors. It is normally not acceptable for your kind to be involved so with ours. Perhaps the words from your mouth do not correlate to the actions of your body?" Alatorict was hard to read with such a large smile always painted on his face, but I got the feeling he was angered by the attention Isslata had just received. I knew from various conversations that she didn't like her general, but I thought that she respected him enough to follow most of his orders.

"Sometimes memories are as an ocean wave. Mine churn against the beach. Sometimes shells are exposed and sometimes they are hidden by the sand. Most of the experiences I have had with your kind have been unpleasant. Recently, I recalled an Elven who helped me, though she had no apparent reason to do so."

"Who was this?" the black-haired general with the piercing blue eyes asked.

"She is long dead. Jayita was it?" She nodded and opened her mouth to ask another question, but I interrupted, "I don't care to understand the way your hereditary traits work, but Fehalda looks very much like my old friend." They looked to the white-haired woman with the onyx eyes.

"What tribe is she?" Fehalda was more interested in the conversation now that I had mentioned her.

"Does not matter. She is long gone as I said." I turned to the empress. "Was there going to be dinner involved in this meeting? I could eat an entire cow and maybe a turkey for dessert." Fehalda's jaw tensed up in annoyance when I didn't answer her.

We will cut them down. One by one. Army by army. They will flee from us as children flee from night creatures.

My own voice echoed in my head. I couldn't place when or where I had said those words.

"Of course. I apologize for the delay. Have the guards not been providing you with enough food?" Telaxthe seemed genuinely concerned and she motioned behind her. I heard a servant beyond the thick curtain climb another set of steps and leave the tent in a hurry.

"Our friend has quite the appetite, my empress." Alatorict smiled at me and I felt the tension in the room relax even more.

"Of course he does. His kind takes more than they would ever need." Yillomar suddenly seemed interested in the conversation; he leaned forward on a hand and spat the words out, glaring at me with lips half-open and tongue hanging across his teeth.

"As you are taking this world?" I shrugged and rolled my eyes.

"It is what is due to us after lifetimes of oppression!" He tensed the network of muscles on his exposed forearms. I imagined he wanted to leap from his chair and kill me. However, he had no weapons at his side and I guessed that Telaxthe had told her generals to be on their best behavior. Or maybe she had planned this outburst to see how I would respond to his words.

"Everyone has a sad story to tell, dog. My story tonight is that I am hungry."

"Did you call me 'dog'?" His teeth clenched together so tightly I heard them grind throughout the room like stone scraping. The large red-haired Elven slowly rose to his feet. His eyes spoke no words besides murder.

"Yes. Now go find an ass to sniff and a tree to piss on. Your yaps and yips annoy me." The tension in the tent had returned full force and I saw the guards standing behind Yillomar step slightly to the side so they could fire their crossbows at me.

"You must be an idiot or insane." He turned to look at Telaxthe. Fehalda and Dissonti shook their heads an almost imperceptible amount, but the empress did not move.

"Or he doesn't know any better," the empress said after a dozen seconds of silent consideration. "Sit. Perhaps the O'Baarni will want to frolic with you after we have conducted our business for the evening." She turned to me and produced a mischievous smile that reminded me again of Nadea. "Yillomar brings up an interesting topic and I must confess I am even more curious about you now that we have met."

"I am flattered," I said sarcastically.

"It seems that you understand none of our ways, or even your own ways. You cannot provide us with any history as far as your clan or world. Yet you claim to be the Destroyer."

"I never claimed to be this person. My name just happens to be Kaiyer." I glanced over at Yillomar and he nodded at his empress's words. I guessed that his outrage was slightly exaggerated.

"It is the same as claiming to be the Destroyer." I heard footsteps descend the stairs beyond the emerald curtain that separated our current meeting area from the rest of the pavilion. "Let us begin dinner and we can tell you of our theories." Eight Elven servants emerged from the curtain on my right side behind Yillomar carrying elaborately carved wooden trays that displayed images of stag and fawn.

The man who had served me last time, who I suspected was actually a trained warrior, set the tray down in front of me and then poured a large glass of white wine before pulling the cover off of the platter. His movement exposed a plate topped with five wood skewers impaling an assortment of different colored tomatoes, fragrant dry cheeses, basil leaves, and smoked venison. Scattered across the dish was a swirl of dark pepper and shavings of orange peel.

There were no forks or knives on the tray, so I grabbed one side of the foot-long skewer and pulled off a succulent mouthful of the food. The empress's cook was many times better than whoever made my meals, and I had to force down a sigh of pleasure once my taste buds realized how delightful the pepper smoked venison tasted in my mouth. After I chewed through the initial bite, the citrus of the orange along with the sharpness of the basil came through and provided a wonderful aftertaste. I couldn't hide my pleasure then and I felt a smile creep up to my cheeks.

"Tell Kaiyer your theory of his origin, Jayita." Telaxthe took a small bite of a tomato at the end of her skewer and smiled at me while she chewed.

"Gladly." The black-haired woman took a sip of wine and then smoothed the front of her teal silk robe. The fabric was a few shades darker than her eyes, but the silver spiral swirls that were embroidered on the silk reflected enough of the light to make me second guess my sense of color.

"You were born of Malek's clan and gifted recently, within the last ten years or so. Something happened to cause you hardship during a sortie on a conflict world. Yellow Fifth or Eighth I would guess. Perhaps a lover or friend was killed while you assisted in one of our relocations." Her face hardened and while I didn't know at all what she was talking about, I guessed that this story could have been personal. "You went back to your clan leaders, but they did not give you retribution. Whomever you lost was important enough for you to risk your soul and execution by your own people for revenge. So you found a route here and are looking for the Elven who wronged you." She took another sip of wine and then raised a night black eyebrow in question.

"That is a descriptive story. You got the revenge part almost correct. I did find the Elven who wronged me a long time ago." I finished the first skewer and quickly went to work on a second.

"You are from Alexia's clan. You are here to thwart us as your kind has in all the previous treaties you’ve pretended agreement to. There is no mistake that news of you first appeared after we had come to this world in search of our freedom." Fehalda had not touched her meal yet. It was hard to read any sort of emotion in her dark eyes, but she seemed confident of her words.

"Why Alexia?" I wondered.

"You are here alone; your clan is so filled with hate you don't even like yourselves. The answers that you have given us in the past few months have been meant to cause confusion, another sign of your alliance. The way you fought my warriors in the streets of this city," she pointed at the side of the tent that faced the walls of Nia, "reflect the training known to Alexia's brood."

"As I recall, I was ambushed by your assassins and had to run through the streets to escape." I finished my second wooden skewer and paused before taking another. "Which part of trying to survive reflects Alexia's clan?"

"The way you navigated the city. You claimed to be ambushed, but my report was detailed in your movements and the tactics you used." I remembered that there was one warrior I let escape. He must have given Fehalda a recollection of the event in a way that convinced her I knew the city much better than I did.

"Then I let myself get captured by Isslata. Perhaps this is just a trick to get close to your empress so I can end her life?" The room went silent and tense again. I ignored them and ate the next skewer. I made sure my enjoyment was plain on my face now. It was too hard to hide it.

"Alatorict?" I turned to look at the lean man with his braided metal hair. I was getting more information out of their theories than I hoped.

"Exiled from Malek's clan for an unspeakable act. You were high in the command structure; maybe even a commander. Your body has a great deal of scars on it, which makes me believe that they may have tortured you for the crime you committed. I've heard that the clans have developed ways to block access to the Elements for the purpose of torture." He took a sip of wine before continuing.

"You escaped before they could kill you and have been hiding on this world for a long time. Long enough to become ignorant of any recent politics. Maybe you have been here for over a hundred years. Your physical body does not look old enough, but your eyes betray your youthful face. You are powerful so I would imagine that the clans would want you in their prisons or dead. Perhaps you think you will redeem yourself by complicating our proceedings. But like my empress and I have told you, we were promised this land by your people, and we have a right to do what we wish with it. We have the treaties signed by your leaders." His voice trailed off at the end of the sentence and he glanced back past the curtain at a pair of boots that sounded violently against the polished wood of the floor.

A leather clad male Elven with sandstone hair hurried behind the row of gathered generals. He was dressed in armor that matched Alatorict: gold with blue trim. Isslata held up her hand and the man deposited an envelope into it before he turned and dashed away.

"What do you think of Alatorict's guess?" Telaxthe asked, breaking the focus of the room on Isslata's letter and drawing attention back to me.

"Everything you have each said has grains of truth to it." I finished the last skewer and set down the wooden stake. When the man walked in with the letter I had rolled one of the wooden sticks outside of the plate and shifted my knee over it. I didn't know if I had been seen, but I felt confident that most of the eyes in the room had been on the strange interruption. There was a thick cream-colored cloth napkin beside the plate. I drained the last of the wine and wiped my mouth with the square before dropping it on top of the plate, concealing the correct amount of wood sticks. There wasn't any way I could kill the empress and live but I felt somewhat more in control of my situation with the crude pointy weapon.

"Yillomar?" Telaxthe looked to her left at the large redheaded general. He threw down one of the long picks and frowned at me.

"I'd say he is stupid and reckless, like a Thayer or Gorbanni. Other than that I have no opinion of this fool." He sneered at me and then sniffed the air with obvious distaste.

Isslata had finished reading the delivered letter and her mouth curled into a smile that I knew too well. In this case though, I didn't know if it would mean good or bad news for me. She handed the letter to Alatorict, who glanced at it before passing it to Dissonti. The woman with the jade hair and eyes passed it to her empress without looking at it.

"What do you think?" I met her green eyes and puzzled at the odd expression on her face.

"You believe you are Kaiyer," she said simply.

"Of course I do." I smiled at her and leaned back. The Elven servant refilled my wine and then took my empty plate away.

"That does not mean you are. Just that you believe." She shook her head at my statement as if I had answered a question incorrectly.

The next course of food was brought out by the efficient servants, but I paid more attention to the empress's face as she read the letter. I had a sinking feeling that any news important enough to interrupt our meeting would not be good for my cause. If the letter was delivered to Isslata, did that mean that it pertained to something inside of the city of Nia? I knew from conversations with her that she was in command of most of Alatorict's forces in the capital, but maybe the empress's guard now handled that responsibility.