After a moment he looked at her. He looked distinctly impressed and…proud.
“Very well done,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d come so far in so short an amount of time.”
“I’ve been practicing,” she said, preening a little.
“To good effect. I was able to break through of course, but it took some effort.”
Again, she didn’t know if that was such a good thing. He was so burned out.
“I suppose you will be fairly able to keep their mind majji at bay,” he said carefully. “And I don’t feel up to fighting all five of you to get out of the house.” He swept his eyes over Wil, Bess, Ky and Jal.
“Good idea,” Jal said. “Because I still think we should take you back to your room and tie you to the bed.”
Dendri gave him a mirthless smile.
“That would force me to exert my will over you. And for the sake of our friendships I’d rather not.”
Ky snorted out a sarcastic laugh. “That’s provided you have the strength to face us down. I’m willing to bet you have about as much strength as a newborn pup.”
“You would lose that bet. Now, we have to go. Come along, Yasra,” he said, still holding her hand as he led her to the carriage waiting outside.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Yasra fidgeted with the lace on the cuff of the breast jacket she had bought with Wil that day on Haverton Street. The velvet was warm, but not warm enough for the chill autumn air it seemed. Or perhaps the chill was coming from inside of her nervous stomach.
She would have never thought she would ever have met the triumvirate in person in the whole expanse of her life. The triumvirate moved in social circles far above even her parents’. Truth be told they were a social circle just amongst themselves. Hells, she had never thought to be anything other than a non. Now here she was, about to walk into the capitol building as if she belonged there. She was about to insert herself into dramatic current events.
What if she truly wasn’t strong enough for this? Dendri had been impressed with her ability to keep him out, but how much of that was her true strength and how much of it was his current weakness? And keeping him out for a few minutes was much different than keeping others out for hours.
She knew very little about the Kiltians. She knew that they did not have majic houses like the Sarens did. Their structure of majic was completely unknown to her. Were the abilities of the Kiltians the same as theirs…only they simply referred to it differently? Or were they truly so alien in ability that even Dendri would be challenged to understand them? To resist them?
“Having second thoughts?” Dendri asked her.
He was sitting across from her, looking like a powerful gentleman, his pristine appearance as he sat back against the red velvet upholstered seat of the carriage a thing of beauty. He was dark and handsome, looking perfect save for the peek of the bandage on his arm and the bloodshot background of his eyes. Unfortunately, the state of his eyes would be readily apparent to anyone with sight, and it could hint at his weakness, inspiring the Kiltians to take advantage of it in some way.
“No,” she replied, not knowing if it was a lie or not. “I’m just worried about you.”
“Try not to be. Any majji with mind reading abilities could take that worry from your thoughts and then see me as a weakness for the triumvirate rather than a strength.”
Yasra swallowed, her nervousness increasing tenfold.
No, she thought firmly to herself, you can do this. You have to do this. You have to protect Dendri at all costs!
The barouche pulled up to the vast marble steps to the capitol building and the footman came to open the door and drop the step. Dendri alighted first, and then turned to offer his hand to her. She took it, but as soon as she was on the step he reached to enclose her waist in his hands and helped her to the ground. She caught his wince as he did so but she was afraid to call him on it in public. She would not argue with him in front of others.
The capitol building was made entirely of white marble, with twelve columns all along its front and an endless amount of stairs leading up from the drive. The capitol was not only the place where the triumvirate and the heddah gathered to conduct political business, but it also served as the residence of the triumvirates and their immediate families.
At present none of the triumvirate was wed or had children, so they were each leading a bachelor’s existence.
Dendri held out his hand to her, and when she took it he tucked her hand onto his arm as he led her up the steps. She was aware of him reading her every expression, so she strove to keep her face still. She did not wish to reflect just how intimidating this enormous building and the things it represented were to her. She firmly focused on keeping him out of her mind. Him and everyone else.
Still, she felt gauche as her eyes went wide over everything she was seeing. She had been raised in one of the more affluent sections of Captiol City, but it had been distant from the actual capitol building. And when she had become old enough to move out of her parents’ influence, she had moved out of the city itself to one of the smaller villages just on the periphery of the city, preferring a country life to a city life.
She had preferred attending a country school, attempting to test out from there rather than one of the crowded city schools. At least then her abject humiliation would have been limited. And yet Dendri had found her there. Had attended a simple country test. For reasons even he did not understand. Fate, it seemed, had forced their hands together.
Now she was on his arm as he led her into the capitol building, its soaring marble columned atrium making her look up about three stories to the glass rotunda letting the midday sunlight into the building. Each level of the atrium had a ring of marble and columns. There were more stairs inside the building, curved ones leading around the inner edge of each ring as the climbed upward.
They walked up to the second floor and Dendri led her into a vast room with a long table made of mahogany wood and matching ornately carved wooden chairs with gold upholstered seats. There was a large hearth, large enough to stand in, with an intense fire built up in it. It was warming the room that might otherwise have been chilled by the marble floors and walls. A midnight blue rug with gold scrollwork ran the length of the room beneath the table. The table itself had to be at least twenty feet long, taking up the entire room.
There were liveried footmen, dressed in dovetail coats and a pale gold and midnight blue livery. The colors of their country. Gold and midnight blue draperies hung at the floor to ceiling windows on the right side of the room. There was a gold runner down the center of the table upon which was two trays of crystal goblets. There was a sideboard on the left side of the room, filled with decanters full of wine of varying degrees of color, from golden warm to violet. The lighter colored wine decanters would be chilled, the others would be at room temperature. There were also decanters of water.
There were Kiltians in the room.
The men were large, as tall as Dendri or taller. But they carried far more weight on their frames than Dendri did, and most of it appeared to be muscle. They wore simple clothes, and they dressed nothing like the Sarens. Whereas the Sarens were fond of tailored clothing and elaborate layers in a variety of fabrics, the Kiltians wore mostly leather. The pants they wore were made of a thin leather that looked to be butter soft and they wore tooled leather vests painted in colorful designs. The largest male in the room was black haired and black eyed…or so it appeared. Their oval pupils were so wide and the dark brown of his irises were so dark that it appeared as though his eyes were entirely black. He wore a full beard, the tip of which had been drawn into a point and threaded with small colored beads. The ear on his left side had been pierced with a piece of carved ivory, the hole clearly having been stretched over time to accommodate the quarter inch thick ornament. There was a beaten gold cuff around his right forearm that was about six inches in length. It was simple and unadorned with any designs or gemstones. He also wore a
gold torque around his throat, the gold thick and twisted.
The other men in the gathering were similarly ornamented, but that one dark male radiated far more power to her. As Dendri led her to one of the seats, there was a commotion at the door and then three confident people strode in through the doorway.
The triumvirate.
The one who stood out to her first was the female of the group, if for no reason other than the virtue of her hair. She was a brilliant hued redhead, her titian curls piled high on her head with one or two left to strategically slide down the length of a long and graceful neck. She was slender, her gown accenting her breasts, as most of their gowns did, flattering her charms there. Her long slender arms were pale and perfect, as were the elegant length of her fingers.
Ariana Colla.
On either side of her were the men. To her right was Jutsin Felone, noted by his arresting green eyes, a more startling emerald than Dendri’s. His black hair shone like a raven’s wing and was caught back into a longish tail. Longer than was fashionable, but clearly that did not matter to him. He was a stunningly handsome man, almost too pretty with fallen angel features. He was a head taller than Ariana and like Dendri wore a cravat and a velvet coat.
To her left was Mason Hittite, easily recognizable by his shock white hair and silvery eyes. She had never met any of them before, but they had been described enough in the papers to make them easily identifiable. Mason Hittite was beefier than either Dendri or Felone, weighing in more like the Kiltians in the room. He was dressed in a black jacket, and a white linen shirt, but wore no cravat. His shirt was opened at the throat revealing glimpses of tanned skin.
“Greetings,” Ariana said to the Kiltian delegation. She did not offer her hand to them, but she did dip into an abbreviated, graceful curtsy. “I am Triumvir Colla, this is Triumvir Felone and Triumvir Hittite.”
“I am Raja Sin,” the largest Kiltian introduced himself. “These are my aides, Hundor, Lindo and Graf.” The Kiltian took in Triumvir Colla with a steady, devouring gaze. He raked his eyes over her body and both of the women in the room knew there was not even the tiniest detail that he missed.
“Shall we get started?” Triumvir Colla suggested, gesturing to the table. Sin nodded and there was a shuffling of people as they all found places at the table. “This is Dendri Adiron, one of my advisors,” Colla introduced him.
“And the woman?” Sin asked, his eyes picking her apart.
“Yasra Desro,” Dendri introduced for the triumvir since she didn’t know exactly who Yasra was. The introduction was met with a single raised brow on the part of Hittite, but other than that they took her presence in stride.
Dendri pulled her chair closer to him and gently picked up her hand. As the talks began, she was aware of everything in the room, but not half as aware as the feeling of Dendri’s hand toying with her fingers. He didn’t just hold her hand, he stroked her palm, caressed each finger with his. It was very distracting.
“We will annex the Triagle Territory,” Sin said brusquely. “We will use it for our own.”
“You think we will simply hand over the territory?” Colla asked, her eyes wide and shocked.
“You will give it or you will face more war. War is costly. In money and in lives. We need territory. The Triagle Territory is a good sized territory that will serve us well, and it has no large cities in it so you will not have to move out many of your Saren citizens.”
“So not only do you want the territory, but you want to boot out those who are already living there?” Hittite asked.
“Exactly. We need the territory for our people. We need room. Your country is large and can afford to lose a little land.”
“The Triagle Territory is not a small piece of land,” Colla said with a harsh frown. “It’s nearly the size of your entire country!”
“And yet only a quarter of yours,” Sin said.
“So you double your territory and we lose a quarter of ours and you call this a fair negotiation?” Hittite snapped.
“You will negotiate or you will return to war.”
“A war you are currently losing,” Felone said.
“So you say,” Sin said dismissively.
Yasra felt the tempers flaring up around the table, the weight of them ebbing into her. She felt Colla struggling to cap her outrage at his outlandish desires. At the sheer nerve of the man. It was obvious even to her nascent senses that Sin rubbed Colla the wrong way.
Dendri was aware of it too it seemed for the next moment a wall of white noise fell over the room, humming in Yasra’s ears. She realized then that Dendri was masking the triumvirate’s thoughts from the Kiltians. Because they were not Aspano, they could only do so much to protect themselves. It was up to Dendri to do the rest.
And act that would wear him out quickly unless she missed her guess.
The fact is, the Kiltians are savage fighters, Dendri said into her mind. Both with majic and with physicality. We are making headway at present, but that could easily change tomorrow.
“And what would you give us in exchange for this territory?” Colla asked, her voice becoming even.
“We have many riches in our country. Riches we can use to fight a prolonged war. Gold and gemstones are most abundant.”
“Gold and gemstones only go so far,” Hittite said. “We need the same things you need. Grain and crops to feed the people. Taking that territory will rob us of a great deal of farmland.”
“You have leagues of farmland here in Saren. More than enough to feed your people. Also, with treasure you can import what you need.”
Colla exchanged a look with Hittite and then Felone.
“Say we annex this territory to you. What is to keep you from wanting more a few years from now…only now you will have grown new resources and more people to fight a war.”
“It would take generations for us to outgrow this new land. We would sign treaties to the effect of promising no more war.”
“We had a treaty before this war began. You broke it,” Hittite said sharply.
“We had no choice. Our people are starving and you would not let us take the land we needed otherwise.”
“Surely we could have saved many lives if you had just come to the table before this. Instead you attacked us in force. You cost us those lives, not the other way around,” Felone said. “As it is you have taken many border villages by force, killing anyone you came across to make them your own. You have already been increasing your borders. But you should know we will take back every inch of land you have won,” Hittite said darkly.
“Then we have nothing more to discuss,” the large Kiltian said, moving to rise out of his chair.
“Gentlemen, please,” Colla said, her tone soothing and immediate. “Let us sit and talk like rational beings. There are many lives at stake if we do not come to some kind of agreement and we will not have that agreement if we waste time posturing.” She turned her attention to Sin, who was still half standing. “We can discuss the giving of land more thoroughly, but it cannot be of a size of the Triagle Territory.”
The burly Kiltian retook his seat fully.
The talks continued on in this manner for the rest of the afternoon. There was much arguing, many times when tempers flared. All the while Dendri kept the mask over the triumvirate’s true thoughts and feelings, keeping the Kiltian’s from knowing just how much the triumvirate was willing to give as they argued down to every last square mile.
They did this without a break for the entire afternoon, stopping only at the end of the day when evening came. The Kiltians left the room as a dynamic force, their presence overpowering all on its own. The relief in the room was apparent as soon as they were gone.
Triumvir Colla turned to her compatriots in the room.
“The fact is, we need their gold and gems as much as they need our land,” Colla said aloud, as though she had been in mid-conversation. Yasra realized that she had been in mid conversation. She had been having a mental discussion with Dendri
and he had been relaying it to the other two triumvirs.
“Our coffers are in a very sad state, what with this war. He was right. War is expensive. As is the regular day to day business of life. The question is, how much land and how much gold. And what to do with everyone who will be booted off the land.
Dendri got slowly to his feet, his movement seemingly aching and awkward. He leaned his hands on the table, using it to support the weight of his upper body.
“You can give them bits and pieces of the country, but they will only want more eventually unless you give them enough to satisfy their needs. They are overpopulated. A country of mountains and hard living. They have the money to import food, and we have made a great deal in trade, but what they need is room. Room to grow,” he said. “But he is being honest when he says his people would be satisfied for generations to come if they were given lands the size of the Triagle Territory.”
“That is out of the question. What would we do with all of those people? What would we do without that grain and produce?”
The argument continued back and forth for several more minutes, but Yasra’s attention was not on it. Her full attention was on Dendri. He looked exhausted. Ready to drop in fact. When he went to straighten up, his legs seemed to suddenly give out beneath him. She was there in a flash, wedging her body beneath his arm and supporting his weight.
“Adiron, are you well?” Hittite asked.
“No he is not well,” Yasra bit out at them. “He is coming fresh from the fight with Delongo…and now you ask him to do this.”
The triumvir seemed taken aback by her ichor.
“I had not realized you were so injured by your encounter with Delongo. The only word we received was that he was defeated and you had made it back alive.” Colla eyed him carefully. “Dendri, we can easily get someone else to take your place.”
“No one as strong as I am,” Dendri said wearily. “One of his aids was the equivalent of at least a 19th level Aspano. If you want your true intentions to remain hidden, you will need me. There is no one else.”