Chapter Five #2
“I heard what the others said, saw the security footage, and so did you. Rand wasn’t taken by surprise—they planned this.
They fell on Lia as soon as she left the protection of that shield, knowing she was the only one who could move against their mage allies and even hope to find me, and they didn’t want me found. ”
“Farkas,” Cyrus said. “That oily bastard is smart enough to know that if he removes Bleddyn or puts him in a position to destroy himself, he could take over Rand. Bleddyn is only just mated and has no children yet, so the title would be up for grabs—”
“His deceased younger brother has a child,” Ulmer protested.
“Who is barely five. And the only other contenders are a couple of cousins who never met a fight they didn’t like. Bleddyn dies, and it gets ugly in Rand.”
“Possibly.” Sebastian didn’t look convinced.
“But I think this is more complicated than an internal power grab, and it doesn’t have to have originated with Rand.
Whoever is behind this would be wiser to use them to take the heat and reserve their own strength.
It could even be someone who was just here, pledging me fealty while planning to slip a knife between my ribs—after we’ve been suitably weakened, of course. ”
His voice never changed, but I saw the anger in his eyes. Because yeah, this was about real people, wasn’t it? Clan brothers and sisters who would die; that was practically inevitable, even if we won.
And if we lost…
God, how had it come to this?
He looked at Ulmer. “But this is speculation. I need to know. Is it stupidity on Bleddyn’s part, a power play by Farkas, or something more? Do I have a knife to my throat that I can’t even see, held in the hand of a friend?”
“Maybe,” the big man said. “Or maybe you just don’t want to accept the more obvious answer: that Rand and the others are being played. That the knife isn’t in one of our hands at all, but the Black Circle’s, who don’t want us in alliance with the Corps—”
“Are we back to that again?”
“Yes! We’re back to that again!” Ulmer’s eyes flashed gold for an instant before he reigned it in.
“We never left it. Not with the war coming down to bodies—who has more of ‘em, and who can protect what they have while inflicting casualties on their enemies.
And the Silver Circle is bigger and stronger than the Black.
“They’ve taken a beating lately, and the dark knows it, but they have, too, and their ranks were smaller to begin with. Us helping to support the Corps is devastating for them, and they wanna stop it at all costs.”
And then he and Sebastian looked at me.
And yeah, I should have seen this coming. “I’m not an expert on the Black Circle,” I told them. “No one is. Secrecy is their biggest weapon—”
“And you’re ours,” Sebastian said simply. “Ulmer is in charge of finding out who is behind the Were part of this, but we have another enemy.”
“And they’re my beat.” I didn’t make it a question because it clearly wasn’t.
“I’m afraid so. If we find out what the Black Circle wants so badly, we might be able to peel them away from Rand. This is going to be an ugly enough fight as it is. I do not need them involved in it.”
“It would help to know who’s wielding whom,” Ulmer agreed.
“What difference does it make?” That voice, angry and impassioned, came from the foyer. Before I could wonder who had stayed behind, Sienna came in.
She was in her early forties, but in her case, the extra years had given her only added presence, the kind that turned heads and would long after the good looks faded.
If they ever did. Because hers weren’t about mere beauty, but the intelligence in those dark eyes, the experience attested by the faint lines beside them, the passion in the color that rode high on her cheeks.
Sienna quiet had a simple dignity that glimmered like the metallic threads woven through her gown’s embroidery, but Sienna angry and impassioned—
Was stunning.
Enough that we all paused to look at her.
“We are at war, however it happened,” she said with silent rage.
“And you’re gonna tell us we shouldn’t be,” Ulmer interrupted, and then abruptly shut up when those flashing eyes fixed on him. And then she was across the room, too fast to track, and in his face.
“What do you take me for, Ulmer, son of Conall—and son of Rudina, too, are you not? Grandson of Lady Randelle, great-grandson of Lady Aylin, and descended from the feared Lady Esmeray—”
“I don’t see what that has to do—”
“Who they say stood her ground at Brunanburgh, when all the men fled.
Yes, they fled the battleground, torn and bleeding, with their tails between their legs!
Yet Esmeray would not yield. No, not an inch, she said, other than the six feet it would take to bury her.
That much she would have if nothing else, and she rallied her troops—yes, and more than half of them women!
Women who were tired of burying their sons and daughters from the clans the Vikings brought with them, women who were sick of war but knew the needfulness of it, women with their young children behind them—the most dangerous foe on Earth!
“They tore through their enemies with a savagery still whispered about today, like Lia did to that clown Bleddyn tonight. She was Esmeray reborn, defending a cub, while the men stood aside and did nothing—”
“You know why we did not,” Sebastian said quietly, but all that did was to turn her attention on him.
“Yes, I know! And what good did it do? What good has restraint brought us all this time, but bodies on the ground, blood in the sand, and now war in any case! They will bleed us out if we don’t bleed them first, and quickly—”
Ulmer blinked, recognizing an unexpected ally when he saw one.
“—and defend our children! What thought have you given to them, hm? In all this talk of war, these vaunted plans, what thought of them? Who protects them?”
Shit. She was right. And I was as guilty as the rest, sitting here reeling from the new reality instead of doing anything useful.
“Call on the Circle,” I said, sitting up. “If they want allies, then they need to be one. And if there is magic on the other side, we must counter it with our own.”
“They’re not going to go after the children—” That was Ulmer.
Who regretted it when Sienna and I both turned on him. “The Black Circle wants something,” I reiterated. “Something they were going to exchange Sebastian for. But if they can’t get to him, how long before someone thinks, what would they give for their children?”
Sienna sucked in a breath, turned, and ran from the room, already yelling for her clan. Sebastian ran after her, and Cyrus, Ulmer, and I just looked at each other. Before I got up and put down the whiskey glass.
Movie night was going to have to wait.