32. Yaaf
YAAF
T hey decided to cut their workout short and go see a movie with Dimitri, Petrov, and their partners.
They hadn't expected to bump into their former lord.
The schedule existed for a reason. The Eight knew exactly when Navuh left his apartment, when he reached the pool, when he finished, and when he was wheeled back. It hadn't been their choice to avoid him.
On the contrary, they had all itched for a confrontation, but the Guardians had warned them that they shouldn't assume they were immune because they hadn't responded to Drova's compulsion.
She wasn't as powerful as Navuh. Also, Lady Areana had requested that they kept their presence on the dungeon level a secret from Navuh, and since he was only allowed to leave his apartment to go to the pool, it had been an easy request to oblige.
Navuh was supposed to be in the pool already, but something must have delayed him.
The elevator traveled the two levels from the gym and stopped at the dungeon floor, but the doors didn't open.
Malfunction, Number Three diagnosed .
Old building, Camdor said. I'll get it.
He hooked his fingers into the seam and pulled the doors apart with no more effort or ceremony than opening a stubborn jar, metal groaning its objection.
The corridor beyond held a tableau none of them had expected. Navuh, sitting in his wheelchair three meters from the elevator, with the goddess standing behind him and the Guardian beside him.
The collective took in the scene in a fraction of a second.
We were too early , Camdor said. Or he was late.
We're early , Ravsoh confirmed. This is on us. We weren't supposed to be here at this time.
Yaaf stepped out of the elevator cabin first, the other seven followed, and eight pairs of eyes settled on the shrunken figure of the male who had owned them.
Lord Navuh of the Brotherhood, creator of the enhancement program, the voice that had blanketed the island, that had pressed down on every mind within its reach, that had lived in the back of their skulls through most of their lives, so constant that they hadn't felt it was there until the moment it was gone, didn't look impressive or intimidating anymore.
He was much slimmer than before, paler, and looked shrunken, deflated.
"What are you doing here?" Navuh demanded in the island tongue.
Look at his eyes, Dumuz sent. He's noticed we're not wearing the filtering earpieces.
We don't need them, Yaaf said. He can't compel us. We transcended.
He's going to try , Bardov sent.
Of course he will, Yaaf sent. It will be amusing to see him try and fail.
The deliberation ran through the link at the speed of thought, faster than Navuh's inventory, faster than the goddess's held breath.
They were quite sure that he couldn't compel them, but until it was put to the test, they couldn't be certain.
On the island, at the end, they'd felt his power gutter as his life force ebbed, felt the leash dissolve, and they'd been liberated.
But his compulsion had held them once, when they had been still a muddy river instead of a solid collective.
They hadn't felt him when they'd settled in the dungeon, but that could be because he was weak, broken.
He was healing, though, growing stronger. If there was any thread of the old leash left, any seam in the merged mind where his voice could find purchase, they needed to know it now, with witnesses and cuffs on his wrists, and not later, at a moment of his choosing.
Verify, Camdor sent, and it was a consensus.
I'll goad him to spend himself doing it , Yaaf added. Let him believe it worked. What he commands when he thinks he's unstoppable will reveal what he's still got.
Goad him, make him angry, Bardov sent.
Yaaf shrugged, making it look as insolent as the collective felt. "We wanted to see the world," he said, "so we crossed over to the clan."
He watched the flare behind Navuh's eyes.
"How?" Navuh demanded. "And why would the clan accept you?"
"That's none of your business." Yaaf lifted one corner of his mouth in a sardonic smirk. "We don't answer to you anymore."
Navuh bit the bait. The collective read it in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hands closed on the large wheels of his chair, in the two seconds of silence while five thousand years of instinct assembled themselves behind his eyes.
"Tell me how you left the island!" The command came, wrapped in compulsion like a lance.
The collective felt it. They remembered this power. On the island, it had been everywhere, a pressure everyone was so used to that they no longer felt it, and the memory of it lived in all eight of them, the same way the memory of the sealed lab cells with glass fronts did.
What arrived now was barely a wave, and yet they had no doubt that he had thrown everything he had into it. The wave spread across the surface of the collective and found no seam, no purchase, and sluiced off them like water off a tiled wall.
The eight of them examined what was left of the most feared power in their world with mixed feelings. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't triumph. It was uncomfortably close to pity.
That's all of it, Number Five sent. That's everything he has. A fraction of what he was. A tenth. Maybe less. The fall broke more than his spine .
He's recuperating, Ravsoh cautioned. He'll grow stronger. This is his floor, not his ceiling.
Let him grow. Yaaf let the collective's verdict assemble itself. The evidence was conclusive and the merged mind didn't sentimentalize. He can climb all the way back to what he was, and it won't matter. We transcended.
"What did the clan promise you to betray the Brotherhood?" Navuh finished, and his voice rang off the concrete.
Behind his chair the goddess stood very still.
Let's give him his false victory, Yaaf sent. It will be all the more devastating when he realizes he was played.
Eight faces slackened on the same beat. Eight pairs of eyes went glossy and distant. It took effort to perform it perfectly enough to be believable, because real thralled men had micro-tremors and drifting focus, and the collective had enough experience to reconstruct every detail.
Navuh bloomed.
He straightened, and his chin lifted. The defeated resignation was gone, and his eyes filled with light. For a moment, Lord Navuh sat in that corridor in all his old glory, resurrected by nothing but the belief that eight weapons were at his disposal again.
It was unsettling to watch his reaction. The calculation moving behind his eyes, the flick of his gaze to Daniel's holstered weapon, to the phone pocket, to the cuffs on his own wrists, the future he was assembling out of their perceived obedience.
Testimony, Camdor said. Witnessed and entered .
Not yet, Yaaf said.
He let his mouth open, close, open, the hesitation of a man fighting compulsion and losing.
"We can compel now. We compel through thralling, not sound waves.
We just walked onto a departing ship in front of a hundred men, and not one of them noticed us, because we compelled them to look the other way. "
He watched the triumph fade from Navuh's face.
"That's impossible," Navuh said. "No one can compel through thralling. Besides, compulsion is inherited, not manufactured in a laboratory."
"Oh, but it is possible." Yaaf smiled.
The Eight dropped the act as one.
Eight faces clearing on the same heartbeat, eight postures straightening in perfect unison, the synchronicity they'd spent weeks suppressing for the comfort of mothers and Guardians now displayed at full amplitude, aimed, for the first time since the escape, as a weapon.
The light drained from Navuh's eyes, his shoulders drooped, and what had inflated a moment ago collapsed the instant he realized that his last weapon had fired into his own chest.
The collective felt no triumph, but it felt satisfaction.
That was the only revenge we'll ever take , Number Three sent.
It was enough, Bardov answered.
Yaaf stepped aside. The other seven moved with him, clearing the path to the other elevator that had just arrived, and as the goddess pushed the wheelchair forward, all eight of them dipped their heads to her.
Not to him. To her, deeply and deliberately, the respect of eight males who knew exactly what she was and what she'd endured and what she'd witnessed a minute ago.
Areana met Yaaf's eyes for the briefest moment, and there was accusation in her eyes that the collective deserved.
Ravsoh held the elevator doors while she wheeled her mate inside, and the Guardian followed.