13. Yaaf #2
Turner followed his gaze. "I hadn't considered the kitchen. I had an old classroom in mind, but you might be right that this will serve Volkov and Petrov better until we build them a proper lab."
That was the first piece of good news the collective had heard today.
The clan was making plans to build a permanent laboratory for them, which meant that they weren't planning to get rid of them.
When everyone was done eating, Turner rose and led them out of the kitchen.
"I'll show you to your temporary quarters.
" He walked up to the elevator that had brought them down to the kitchen level.
"It's three levels below this one. We call it the dungeon level, but you are not prisoners, and what used to be cells were converted a while ago into comfortable guest rooms. It's just a secure place that we use for those who need it.
You can move through the keep freely once you're settled in. "
"Are there any guests on that level other than us?" Yaaf asked, his instincts prickling at the way Turner had chosen his words.
The strategist pressed his palm to the reader by the elevator. "Just one. Your former lord is down there."
"Navuh?" Yaaf asked even though there was only one person Turner could have referred to as their former lord.
We should feel him, Number Three thought, and the others agreed.
On the island, his presence had been a constant pressure at the edge of their awareness, the low, ambient hum of his compulsion cloud blanketing everything, so pervasive that most immortals stopped noticing it.
When it had lifted, though, the night he vanished, they'd felt the absence like a held breath finally released.
He was here, in this building, and the collective felt nothing.
We've transcended , Yaaf thought. He can no longer touch us .
"We cannot sense him," Yaaf said aloud. "On the island, his compulsion blanketed everyone. It was like a constant pressure. Is he drugged?"
Turner shook his head. "Not as far as I've been informed, so I wouldn't be able to tell you why that is, not with any authority. I've never felt what you're describing in the first place, so I can't say what its absence means. My best guess is that it has something to do with the state he's in."
"What state?"
Had they tortured him? Starved him?
Not that the collective cared about what had been done to their former tormenter, but it didn't fit the image they had of the clan. Then again, the clan and the Brotherhood were ancient enemies, and getting information out of Navuh would have been the smart thing to do.
Navuh wouldn't have caved, out of pride more than to protect the organization he had created.
Turner held his gaze with those pale blue eyes of his, then nodded. "He was badly injured the night you felt him disappear."
The elevator arrived, the doors opened, and Turner motioned for them to go in. The two Guardians entered behind them.
"I'm not sure I'm the best one to tell this story," he said as it started to move.
The collective waited while the elevator descended, and when the doors opened again, they filed out and followed Turner.
He told the story, or rather a brief version of it, while walking them the rest of the way down the corridor.
A harem lady named Tula, pregnant and unwilling to surrender her child the way the harem required.
Areana, the queen of the harem and Navuh's truelove mate, conspiring to get her off the island rather than watch it happen.
A cliff. A fall. Areana going over the edge and a Guardian catching her and preventing her fall to the rocks below, and Navuh, seeing only the fall and not the rescue, throwing himself after her with no plan beyond the desperate, unthinking certainty that he would not survive her death.
"He hit the rocks," Turner said. "Nearly every bone in his body shattered, and his internal organs were badly injured, but by some miracle he survived, probably because he is a demigod and his healing ability is superior, and because Areana begged the Guardians to save him.
We had to oblige her because she's Annani's sister. "
All eight stopped walking, the shock of that statement rippling through the collective, and the Guardians trailing behind them stopped as well.
"Navuh had Annani's sister locked in the harem?" Number One asked.
Turner smiled, and it transformed his face from austere to almost pleasant.
"That's another long story, but I'm not going to tell it tonight.
What I can tell you, though, is that once Tula realized that with Navuh gone from the island, the rest of the harem ladies would be in danger, she insisted on going back and getting the rest of them out.
That was how all the harem ladies disappeared.
We got them, and they now live happily and freely in our village. "
Turner stopped in front of a row of open doors, cells with their fronts open to the corridor, and gestured.
"Point is, Navuh is not what he used to be.
I hear that he is still as cantankerous and manipulative as ever, but he has no teeth.
He lost the use of his legs, and it will still take a while longer for him to regain use of them. Lady Areana is taking care of him."
"Which cell is he in?" Number One asked.
"That one." Turner pointed. "The one without the window at the bottom. It's an apartment, and much too nice for him, but we couldn't throw him in a regular cell because of Lady Areana."
"Because she is Annani's sister," Number One reasoned.
"Exactly."
"We assume she's a half-sister, born to a human concubine."
Turner smiled for the second time. "They are half-sisters, but they were both born to goddesses. Areana is older and was born to a goddess who was not married to Annani's father. After Ahn married Nai, Annani's mother, he was exclusively hers, his truelove mate."
The collective stopped listening after Turner had said that Navuh's mate was a goddess. He had been hiding a goddess in the harem, and no one in the Brotherhood had known?
"Stunning, I know," Turner said as if he'd read their minds, and then gestured at the row of open rooms.
There were eight of them, small and long. Each had a small couch, a television with a console below it, a single full-size bed, and a narrow bathroom visible behind a half-wall made of glass blocks.
"Separate rooms," Number Six said. "We don't like that."
"I know that's not how you are used to living.
" Turner motioned at one of the rooms. "The beds are not big enough for two adult men to share comfortably, and we can't fit another bed in there.
Besides, that doesn't solve the problem.
If you want, you can carry the beds out to the corridor and sleep out here together, or you can just leave the doors open. "
The idea of moving the beds into the corridor was tempting, but the collective decided to try the separate rooms first.
"There's clothing in the closets," Turner continued. "Everything else you need should be in the bathrooms." He turned to the Guardians. "You have the earpieces, I assume."
"Yes." Theo reached into his pocket, retrieved two small black cases, then reached into another pocket and retrieved another two.
Jay did the same.
They distributed the cases to each of the Eight.
"Why do we need earpieces?" Yaaf opened the case and looked at the small devices nestled within it. Was that how the clan planned to control them?
"Precaution," Turner said. "You are sharing this level with Navuh.
He leaves his apartment only once a day, for an hour, to go to the pool, and it is at the same time every day.
You will be in the gym during that time because it's better if he doesn't know you are here.
But in case you bump into him somehow, wearing these earpieces will filter out the compulsion component from his voice and protect you from his influence. "
Yaaf closed the case and handed it back to Turner. "We don't need these. We have transcended, and Navuh can no longer assert his power over us."
Turner shook his head and didn't take the case. "You can't be sure of that, and it's always better to err on the side of caution."
So that was why they sent an immune to meet them, so he could tell them a story about the earpieces to convince them to wear them. The clan could incapacitate them by sending a strong pulse through those devices, which would keep them down just long enough to put a bullet in their heads.
The collective could understand why the clan would take such precaution, but that didn't mean they had to agree to it.
"We'll see about that." Yaaf slid the case into his pocket, intending to discard it later.
Turner regarded him with understanding in his eyes.
"We can't force you to wear them, but we can ask that you exercise caution around Navuh.
Even in his weakened state, he's a very dangerous male.
I promise that all these earpieces do is filter out compulsion by converting the words entering them into machine voice. Nothing else."
Or so he says, the collective thought .
The other seven put the earpieces in their pockets, and Turner understood the unspoken response.
"Shower, change, rest or watch television," he said instead. "We have every movie and program imaginable. I'm going to go check on how the scientists are settling in, and I'll come back here once Volkov gives me an answer about starting work on setting up the lab right away."