Chapter Five
Holy shit,” I said, after the unusually quiet and grim-faced bunch had filed out.
They had pledged loyalty to Sebastian, on one knee in the old way, before leaving.
And it had been a hell of a sight, like something out of time, the powerful clan leaders in their finery, swearing their own and their people’s blood to an equally regalia-clad man.
And all while knowing that blood was indeed what it would take before this was over.
Of course, I knew they hoped for an advantage once their enemies were beaten—position, their enemies’ wealth, influence, and renown. But that required winning first, and this… Was going to be bad.
What the hell had just happened?
“It’s been a long time coming,” Sebastian said wearily, going to get himself a drink.
“Yeah, but…” I tried to gather my thoughts, but they were scattered tonight. “This isn’t just war on the Black Circle. It’s on Rand and whoever follows them—”
“And it wasn’t already?” Ulmer growled.
“—which means civil war within the Were community. Are we really doing this?” I looked around at the small group of unsmiling people who were left.
“There’s not much choice, Lia,” Cyrus said quietly. “After tonight, it’s war whether we want it or not. To fail to acknowledge that is only going to give the other side the upper hand.”
“Like we’ve been doing!” Ulmer put in. “This should have happened a month ago, if not before! Rand got off Scot-free after Whirlwind’s challenge, with Sebastian letting his blood pay for all, and you see how well that worked!
I told you then,” he said, looking at his bardric.
“They take leniency as a sign of weakness. You want to deal with Rand? Do it the way Lia did tonight, and let your anger be written in blood!”
“Thank you,” Sebastian said dryly. “I think that point has been made.”
“And damned time, too! Else there’ll be more of the same, and I can’t guarantee my people can detect the damned mages they’re working with, not through the spells they’ve developed to deceive our noses. Or to send us off on wild goose chases all over the hotel while you were right there!”
That point seemed to have wounded his pride.
“But civil war?” I said, still caught between shock and horror.
The last month had been about trying to avoid exactly this.
The council session had started with the duel between Cyrus, standing in for his wounded brother, and Whirlwind over who would lead.
And had been followed by an attempt to heal the fractures in the Were community, to make compromises with the more traditional side, to understand what they were thinking and why they had backed that bastard.
Only to discover on the last day that what they were thinking was murder.
Or kidnapping, which might have been worse.
“They tried to kill the bardric! In council session!” Ulmer roared. “There’s no other possible answer—”
“They didn’t try to kill him,” I pointed out. “They tried to take him—”
“And would have, but you didn’t give ‘em time,” he said, looking at me with something approaching approval for once.
It was a rarity. Ulmer didn’t like me, as he was more old-school, and I…
was not. He especially didn’t like me being a member of the Corps, not seeing it as suitable for any Were, much less the daughter of Laurentia of Lobizon.
He seemed to be softening up since Cyrus and I got close, but I was pretty sure that was less because I was dating a guy who wasn’t exactly conventional himself, than because I’d finally Changed and taken on the role of Lupa of a clan, however pathetic of one.
It was a paw in the right direction, from his perspective.
“My point is that the leader of the mages was strong enough to have killed Sebastian from across the room, if he’d wanted,” I said.
“But it sounded like he wanted something else, something important enough to draw out a council member, and thought that taking Sebastian might force us to give it to him. Or might force the Circle…”
I tried to remember the exact words he’d used. I was trained to recall stuff like that, and maybe I would once I’d rested. But right now, I was brain-dead.
“And you think it was a dark council member?” Sebastian said, crouching in front of me and handing me a glass of something that turned out to be straight whiskey.
I hadn’t realized how bad I’d needed it until it was burning a path down my throat. And it did burn, underneath all that mellow peatiness. He’d paid for the good stuff.
“It’s not their reputation,” I said, gasping a little. “To risk themselves in open combat. But he was strong enough. Without help…” I paused because it was a bitter admission, but it was the truth. “Without help, he’d have taken me.”
“Find out which vamp that was,” Sebastian told an aide. “I want to reward him.”
He looked back at me, and his blue eyes were kind but resolved. “I need everything you have on this mage, Lia.”
“You already have it—”
“Like hell,” Ulmer rumbled. “See, this is the problem with divided loyalties,” he said to Sebastian. “She’s covering for the Circle—”
“I’m doing no such thing!” I said hotly.
“Don’t lie to your bardric. You know what they have—”
“And the Black Circle would love to get their hands on most of it! But there’s no way the Circle would give up a weapon—any weapon—to the enemy—”
“Not even to get one of their biggest allies back?” That was Sebastian.
“Not even for that. There’s a policy in place to prevent people from having the incentive to do this, or it would happen all the time. And the Black Circle knows that. We don’t make deals with terrorists—”
“We don’t, meaning the Circle. But what about you?” That was Ulmer.
“What?”
“Maybe they thought you’d turn something over to save your bardric. You’re Corps, but you’re also Were, and you’re ‘dating’ his brother,” Ulmer scowled at the human term, which old-timey Weres didn’t use.
You were mated, or you weren’t, from their perspective, with none of this dating nonsense.
And if it hadn’t been for the advantages of tying the knot in human society, many never would have bothered, seeing their own bond as closer.
Cyrus and I were a couple as far as they were concerned, and as two heads of a single clan, even more so.
How to explain that humans might not see it that way?
I wasn’t sure, because in this case, he might be right.
“Lia?” Cyrus said, seeing something flit across my face that I was too tired to conceal.
“This might be because of me,” I admitted.
“That’s absurd—”
“Is it? I helped to save Sebastian, but I might have endangered him, too, without realizing it. If the Circle thought I would steal from the Corps in exchange for his life… yeah. It could have put him in danger.”
“That’s why you need to quit the damned Corps,” Ulmer snapped. “I’ve been saying it—”
“Her connections there have proven valuable to us,” Cyrus reminded him angrily.
“Yeah, it really looked that way tonight!”
“And our alliance with the Circle might not even be possible except for her. The clan elders like having a Were in the Corps. Otherwise, it’s just another all-human organization trying to control them—”
“And isn’t it?” Ulmer spread his arms. “Where’s the lie? ‘Cause I haven’t seen any sign—”
“You haven’t been looking for one! You’re as bad as some of the others—”
“Don’t group me in with those traitors!” It was a snarl. “I’m trying—”
“Enough.” That was Sebastian, and a word from his bardric would usually silence even Ulmer’s famous temper, but not tonight, it seemed.
“—to keep a man safe who seems determined to get himself killed! ‘We’re at war,’” he mimicked.
“We’ve been at war! From the moment we decided to help the Circle, we’ve been a target, and you most of all!
How many times have you almost been killed?
How many times have we thought we plugged all the holes, only to have some fucker slither in—”
“That isn’t what this was,” Sebastian said, his voice ice. Maybe because Ulmer was right; there had been multiple assassination attempts on Sebastian’s life, only none since Whirlwind died, leading us to assume he had been behind them.
And maybe he had. But he clearly wasn’t alone in wanting a change in leadership, and some of that was likely my fault, too. Or mine and Cyrus’s.
Our new little clan and those like it might have been the tipping point for some of the traditionalists.
“Yes!” Ulmer was saying. “It was far worse! They actually got their hands on you this time!”
Sebastian abruptly stood up, control in every line of his body, the rigid, iron self-discipline that the other clan leaders hadn’t witnessed because they wouldn’t have valued it.
They had wanted a raging beast, and he’d given them one, because it would have been worse if he hadn’t.
If some of them had mistaken control for weakness at the worst possible time, it could cause their loyalty to waver.
But that wasn’t who Sebastian was.
People discounted Weres because they saw us as hulking brutes who could be dangerous in the right circumstances, but weren’t a threat in the way that some other groups were.
We weren’t famous for the long-term planning of the vamps, or the practical ruthlessness of the Circle, or the inscrutability of the fey.
We were considered valuable allies, good fighters, but as far as anything else…
Nah. Those dumb beasts were nothing but muscle. And before Sebastian, there had been some truth in that.
But he didn’t fit that profile. He could rage when he needed to, and fight as savagely as any of them, but the cold calculation in those blue eyes spoke of a sharp mind behind it all. And so did his next words.
“We’re focusing on the tool, not the wielder,” he said. “Someone—and it wasn’t that fool Bleddyn—convinced the Black Circle that they could gain an advantage by helping tonight. But it wasn’t the mages who caused half of the room to stand there, doing nothing. Or worse, to fight against us.”