Authors: Scott V. Duff
He heaved a heavy sigh out and said, “Yes, sir, probably, though technically, it’s not supposed to matter anymore. He was my father-in-law. His daughter and I have been divorced three years now and she’s remarried since then.”
“Ouch,” I said, grimacing. “Still not an ideal defender in any case.”
“I don’t think they’re here to defend us, precisely,” he said as we entered the gym.
“Yeah, I got that impression, too,” I answered as we headed for the center of the room. “I’m not sure what their agenda actually is, though, and I don’t want to go digging around in their heads for it, so we’ll just wait and see if they spill it later. Just play it cool when we talk with them, regardless of the outcome of our discussion. But realize, Major, I won’t make this easy.”
“No, sir, I expect you won’t,” he said, grinning at me. It just irked me.
I broke the compulsion as we stepped up onto the podium. Not one of them blinked in response, but I wasn’t expecting one. The bond was strong, but very case sensitive. They wouldn’t have sensed it unless it was invoked at that time and since they were standing at attention and waiting for the ‘at ease’ call of their own volition, no one noticed. I was about to make that call when I heard Messner.
“Are you really going to have to protect me?” he asked Kieran in almost a whisper. Ethan did burst into laughter then, in the real world this time and Peter was close behind him. It made me smile and broke the tension in me somewhat.
“No,” Kieran answered quietly, smiling. “Seth has better control than that, trust me. That was for the rubes. Ethan, get up off the floor. It wasn’t that funny.” That, of course, just sent him into further fits. I capped his noisiness off until he could control himself and turned to Byrnes.
“At ease, guys,” I asked, raising my voice to project out. “Major, let’s start with the most obvious feature of today: the uniforms. Why have most of your men chosen to wear my color?”
“To show you the solidarity of their decision, Lord Daybreak,” Byrnes said. “I did say the numbers were overwhelming.”
“Yes, all but seventeen have gone certifiably insane in just a few days?” I asked incredulous of the number.
“I believe that I could argue just the opposite, Lord,” he said calmly. “In the last three days, all of us, those seventeen men included, have found a peace that has eluded us for all of our adult lives.”
“And you think that asking for asylum on Gilán will answer all of your problems?” I asked, trying to challenge his beliefs. “How? Isn’t that the same as running away from them? What makes you think that life here will be easy? Or even easier?”
“We don’t expect it to be easier, Lord,” Byrnes said. “We expect it to be a lot of hard work. Training for an entirely different kind of fighting, if that’s even what we end up doing here. You don’t get it, Seth. We’re in the same boat they were. You kicked our ass, but when you saw that we were getting thrown to the dogs, you helped us. You gave a damn about us. You gave a damn about them. And frankly, nobody has ever really done that for any of us. It gave us a sense of belonging, a sense of home that we’ve never had before.”
“So you’ve been talking with the faery,” I said. It wasn’t a difficult jump in logic. “You realize that the brownies are completely different types of creatures than you are, don’t you? It is their nature to be happy and helpful.”
“Yes, sir,” Byrnes said. “They were especially talkative the morning after the Great Claiming. Everyone was quite excited. They bubbled around all day. You should have seen the look on Ellorn’s face after you sent word that you would be using the monument as a centerpiece for a knowe for the Queens of Faery. He was so excited about the honor that he sent runners down the Road to tell everybody.”
“And this is so inspirational to all of you that you’re willing to give up your lives in the normal world for lives here on Gilán?” I asked skeptically. “Without knowing what those lives might be like?”
Before he could answer, I pushed a compulsion out onto the soldiers in the room, a strong one. It enforced honesty, just as I threatened the Pentagon brass with. If they expected me to lay a geas on them, they could handle this.
“We are,” Byrnes said evenly, the compulsion set perfectly in place.
“And the rest of you?” I asked looking around the room. Men nodded as I looked at them. Some even spoke, “Yes, sir.” Several of the green clad men were even nodding. I singled one out, waving at him to stand up, and said, “Okay, now you’re confusing me. You’re willing and unwilling?”
“Yes, sir, sort of, Lord,” he stood, nervously shifting from foot to foot. “I feel just as Major Byrnes is describing and I’d dearly love to stay, sir. It’s just that… I got a kid… I don’t get to see him much, and after this, I’m sure his douchebag step-dad will make it even harder. But after the way you made us feel, I couldn’t just abandon him. He might need me at some point in the future, as much as I doubt it.” He gave me a sad smile as he sat back down dejectedly.
I went through the other sixteen of the seventeen and they all had similar stories of someone they couldn’t leave behind because of me. Even though I couldn’t help but feel that they dug the holes they spoke from themselves, it wasn’t even a question of whether I could forgive that, but whether I had the right to enforce my will on their futures that bothered me.
“But you realize I can’t treat you any differently than I can the faery here,” I said, pausing slightly to look through the crowd of still cheerful faces. “You would have to accept the geas. Do you have
any
idea what that means?”
A random man that I just happen to be looking at stood. “Yes, sir, we think we do. You… invade our minds.” He paused and gulped at the idea. “But frankly, if you can do that and still think I’m worth having around? I can live with that. After what the brownies describe what having the geas feels like, with that connection to you and to this realm… If it’s
anything close
to that description? Yeah… I mean, yes, sir, Lord, we’d do it.”
“There are several unknowns but let’s start with what I do know,” I said, dazed by the man’s idealized statement. I rubbed my face to clear my thoughts and try to rid myself of some of the frustration. That’s when I noticed Shrank for the first time as he sat perched on Kieran’s shoulder, hidden in his brighter than bright aura that so few of us actually saw. “Hello, Shrank, I didn’t see you there.”
“Good morning, Lord Daybreak,” he squealed quietly. “Please don’t let me interrupt your deliberations. I know this is a difficult decision for you.” The cheerful exuberance and earnestness on his face as he pushed himself up off Kieran’s shoulder far enough to say that was comical. I had to remind myself that he wasn’t mine, even if he cared enough about me. Kieran turned slightly, smiling and sensing the tiny tendril of Gilán I sent ruffling through his wings.
“Accepting the geas will not, I repeat
not
make you like First,” I continued less severely but no less emphatically. “It will not make you like the brownies or any of the other faery. It
may
change you once you are linked to Gilán. That is the part I don’t know. Gilán is changing the faery in many ways and while it appears that all that is truly happening is that they are reverting to their true forms, perverted by their previous Lord some time before, I can’t be certain of that.
“I am too young, too new at this, and too untrained at everything to know what will happen,” I cried out through the gym, probably stridently, but I was trying to convince them this was a bad idea. Another random soldier, a woman this time, stood to speak.
“Yes, sir, we know that,” she said. “But that’s part of it, ain’t it? Even if you don’t agree to it, if things go ass up and they still want to throw us in a hole and fill it with cement, you’re not gonna let that happen either, are ya? An’ we gotta live with that, too. I’m not sure how long I could before I stepped out into traffic. Sir.” She sat down looking depressed and the large man next to her slipped his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tightly to him. He didn’t look the type to be offering emotional support for anyone, but there he was.
I capped the podium off with the Stone and turned to the FBI. “Agent, please tell me you see something wrong here? Stockholm Syndrome, something! This is plain creepy.”
“That much we agree on,” Messner said, still watching them. “It is creepy, the way they’ve all latched onto you this way. And there’s no doubt that they’ve all suffered great psychological damage in their lives. That is evident in most of their auras. Maybe if you release their compulsions, that would help deflect a lot of the strength of their convictions.”
“He did that already,” Peter said softly, coming up beside Messner. “When we came in. It barely registered on their consciousness at all. He replaced it with a truth spell, a strong one, too. You’ve been hearing honest reactions from them all along.”
“All the more alarming, really,” Messner muttered, sighing. He looked at me, almost forlornly. “I just don’t know any better than you do, Seth. I’m sorry.”
“Kieran? Peter? Any ideas?” I asked hopefully, but they were both shaking their heads, too.
“No, not really,” Kieran said. “We’re seeing the same things you are, I’m afraid. It’s up to you. We’ll support you, either way you go, but that’s the only opinion I can offer.
“And if nothing else, we can employ them as security, if we need to,” Peter offered, which wasn’t such a bad idea once our business was up and running.
Damn it, I was so against this.
“All right, Major Byrnes, Captain Velasquez, I’ll make it part of the negotiations to try,” I said. “Gather up those seventeen men, get their details. Maybe we can find a way to make this work for everybody. We’ll go talk to them now, but please keep this out of their hearing just yet.”
“Yes, sir,” Byrnes said, the smile searing his face would be there for days. “But I feel I should warn you that Morelli has already asked me why I haven’t begged you to stay.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll deal with that pompous twit as I need to, thank you,” I said. Byrnes burst into a deep laugh at my insult of his ex-father-in-law, and it was oddly cheering. I hadn’t heard him laugh yet. Barely seen the man smile. Velasquez was grinning ear to ear, too, which reminded me of something.
“Captain, may I ask what may be a difficult question?” I asked him.
“Yes, sir, of course,” he said, suddenly alarmed, not that I blamed him considering how I asked it.
“I’ve dealt with four officers from the Pentagon,” I started, “And they’ve all been older, white men. Is there not a greater racial mix at that level? Looking out here, there certainly is…” It was Velasquez’s turn to laugh and Messner’s, no doubt at my naiveté.
“Yes, sir, there are,” he managed to say after a moment.
“My guess is you’re being profiled,” Messner said smiling. “You’re an unknown entity, so they’re taking what they do know about you and making sure that they apply as much similarity as possible to make you as comfortable with them as possible. It’s a common and simple formula.”
“Hhmm, you sure it’s not the opposite?” I asked.
Messner shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible, but it’s unlikely.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Mike and our crew were still on the Promontory when we walked out the front of the Palace. The Pentagon brass were clearly impressed by the size of the place, gawking back at it as they surveyed the valley, in equal parts impressed by the view. They didn’t see us coming since Kieran had us moving along the Road pretty fast. He apparently had the idea down much better than I did and practiced.
“Gentlemen, I hope we haven’t kept you waiting too long,” I said as Kieran brought us to a halt right behind Harmond and Mike. Harmond was startled but I let Mike know we were coming, mainly because of the cosmetic changes. Jimmy shined in his natural Gilán blue sheen for simplicity’s sake. Kieran chose a deep, ruddy red, matching
Des’Ra’El’s
skin tone, amusing me but disturbing Ethan to a degree, not that he showed it. Kieran’s eyes, though, stayed their natural emerald green, shining with impish charm the entire time. Ethan chose to match his uniform and changed into an emerald and blond muscle god with blue eyes. It was a disconcerting look and I was glad it was temporary. Peter chose a deep mahogany brown that went well with the green silks, while I went bright purple, clashing violently with the blue of mine.
Mike turned around first and clamped his jaw tight, his mouth a thin line and his face reddening as he fought to keep from bursting. David and Steve weren’t as adept at controlling themselves and shifted to the Throne Room where I could hear them laughing. Once Harmond turned around, he started at the sight of us, then he, too, started laughing unashamedly. Morelli and Barnett wandered up confused by Steve and David’s disappearance, but merely amused by our appearance and Harmond’s reaction. David and Steve trotted up behind us, eyes still alight and faces flushed but both more composed.
“Let me guess,” Harmond wheezed. “You’re telling us skin color doesn’t matter to you.”
“Why?” I asked innocently. “You don’t like purple? And the proverbial green man? How could you not love him?”
“The hair color makes it a bit odd,” Harmond said grinning. “Mister Kieran looks comfortable in his color, though, and First and Mister Borland look rather majestic. But I’m sorry, sir, the purple just doesn’t suit you.” He chuckled again.
Shrank shot from Kieran’s shoulder in a flurry of red, glittery dust straight for Harmond. Stopping a foot and a half out, his wings beating a mildly irritated buzz, making his ferocity look more comical to those who knew him. “My Lord Kieran is more than a ‘Mister’, sir!” he squealed. Then some waving bit of grass caught his attention and he dropped to the ground and away, bouncing merrily toward the edge of the path where the flowers grew.
“Though I would hardly say my meager talents put me in the same league as my little brother,” Kieran said. Ethan sputtered and snickered for a moment. Chuckling myself, I let the purple-skin veil slip away. Peter and Ethan were a second behind me with Kieran a few seconds behind them.
“So, how do you like my home?” I asked. “It’s still very empty right now, but I have plenty of time to fill it.”
“It is quite beautiful, Lord,” Harmond said, intending the view.
“Yes, and quite huge, too,” Morelli agreed, intending the Palace.
Barnett was more diplomatic. “I think they’re both quite beautiful, Lord Daybreak. How far do your borders extend?”
“Farther than the eye can see,” I said avoiding the question. “We haven’t yet mapped everywhere yet, but it is a large region.” I couldn’t see how telling them that this continent alone was as big as North and South America together was pertinent to them anyway. “Shall we go to my office and continue our talks now?”
“Certainly, sir,” Harmond said, moving toward the Palace door. “Did your… ceremony go as planned?”
“Not as I planned, no, but well enough,” I said and shifted us all to a conference room in my office.
“Whoa!” Harmond muttered, then chuckled as we took our seats on the far side. Barnett and Morelli had similar orientation issues with the change in location, both grabbing the backs of chairs to steady themselves.
Peter snickered at them. “I understand the feeling, trust me. At our—what, Seth, fourth battle?—he gave me his talent to jump and his Crossbow and had me jump us, like, fifty times in three minutes! It’s very disconcerting.”
Kieran quirked his head to the side at Peter, then recalled the story of Grammand. “Oh, the Dance of the Veil. A clever offense, by the way.”
“Thank you. I’m just glad it worked and Peter was downright scary in that fight,” I said.
“
He
’s scary?” Ethan snickered. He was implying I was scarier, not that Peter wasn’t. They wouldn’t realize that.
“Yeah,” I scoffed, pointing at him. “Friendly Peter, shooting my Bow, sometimes once or twice, sometimes fifty times in a wide arc,
and
tossing those corrosive oily balls around or throwing knives at furious speeds. He’s scary!” Peter smiled broadly and waved side-to-side at everyone. Kieran started snickering, too, which really didn’t help my case.
Mike reached over and pinched Peter’s cheek, saying, “Yeah, mate, look all innocent, but I saw you throw, what was it? Three hundred miniature vortexes at an army of advancing elves to toss them into a crevasse that Gordon had just made? I agree with Seth. You
are
scary!”
“They had all the good fights,” Ethan said glumly. Kieran barked into laughter and pounded him a few times on the back pretty hard playfully. Mike and Peter were quietly laughing and smiling. David and Steve were watching with great interest and getting more comfortable with us, even after just a few days. And they were both clearly impressed at what Mike had just said of Peter.
On the other side of the table sat Messner who still stared at Peter and Mike with his mouth open, literally as far as it could drop without outside interference. Seriously, “ding-ding-ding, mouth-is-ajar,” like in a car warning system. The other three stared at Mike, desperately trying to disbelieve him but failing.
“Messner,” Peter said innocently. “You might want to be careful. There are a number of things that fly around here.” Messner’s mouth snapped shut, along with his eyes, and his face flushed a bright red. Then he hid his face behind one hand for a moment to regain his composure as the grown men across from him giggled at his embarrassment. It only took him a few seconds to come out from behind his hand. His face was still cherry red but fading fast.
“Well, I told you not to wander off,” Kieran snapped at someone off his right shoulder, then Shrank popped in. I’d left him outside after he’d wandered off into the flowerbeds. I’d forgotten my rooms were privileged space.
“Would anyone care for refreshments before we begin?” I asked politely. “Water, coffee, tea? We’re quite reasonably stocked now.”
“Coffee, please. And water,” Harmond said, still awed at the idea of miniature tornadoes. Morelli and Barnett muttered agreement and Messner just asked for water.
“Do you have any pineapple juice?” David asked.
“Think so, in the mess kitchen,” I said. “I really should get my kitchen stocked. And staffed. Anyone else?” The rest of my side latched on to the idea of coffee, too, but I knew it was more for the military’s sake than their desires, except maybe Peter.
Ellorn
, I called, seeking my major domo through the Palace,
would you mind sending a few trays of refreshments to my office, please? Enough coffee and water for twelve through a long conversation. And I have one request for pineapple juice. I believe that there’s some in the barracks kitchens.
Certainly, Lord Daybreak
, Ellorn replied through the link.
Shall I have Lt. Brinks deliver?
Only if it is somehow easier for you,
I answered, the question made me suspicious and I dipped slightly into his mind. It wasn’t hard to see the expectation there, sitting on top the way it was.
Ellorn, even if I am able to come to an agreement with them about Byrnes and his men, they aren’t replacing you. They couldn’t, even for show. You are too much a part of who I am, now, and I won’t go shoving you in a closet.
Of course not, Lord…And thank you
, he sent, pleased.
Would you care for something light to eat as well? Some biscuits, cookies, doughnuts, fruit?
A small selection of some kind would be nice, thank you, Ellorn. I’ll leave the choices to you.
I felt a soft, warm glow across the Palace as the faery took up the comfort that Ellorn felt then. It was nice, but I hoped I didn’t need to keep up this kind of reassurance.
“So, General, it’s been my experience that the only time a government or military has moved swiftly on something,” Kieran said, taking the bull by the horns and starting the conversation, “is when they want something very badly. What is it that the Pentagon wants to warrant risking another general and two colonels?”
“Simply the resolution to a difficult political and legal situation, Lord Kieran,” Harmond said smoothly, smiling and lying quite clearly. “You are in a position to make this very embarrassing for us and we want to assuage as much of that as humanly possible. I’m sure you can understand our position there.”
“True,” Kieran agreed, speaking slowly. “But we’re also a very private family as I’m sure our lack of records implies. Of course, shooting at us really ticks us off, but I think we’re past that point, aren’t we?” Kieran was very soft on the last part of that sentence, stressing it nicely.
“Yes, I believe we’re well past that point, Lord Kieran,” Harmond agreed emphatically. “The United States Army certainly has no conflict, no
military
conflict with its fellow citizens and we certainly have no designs on adding Gilán or the McClures to the ranks of its political adversaries. We’d prefer to count you among our allies.”
Kieran winced slightly. “I’m afraid that ‘allies’ might be too strong a word considering our positions in our world, General.”
“Perhaps, ‘friendly associates’ would be a better term,” I said quietly, seeing Harmond’s growing alarm.
“Yes, that’s a good way of putting it,” Kieran said warmly. “As my brother has no doubt told you, we aren’t exactly bound under the terms of the Accords as others of our kind are, but that doesn’t free us from the moral and ethical restrictions nor does it free us from those agreements that we take on ourselves. Seth has agreed to follow the Accords in principle and so do we. As such, there are limits to the actions that we can take as ‘allies’ to you.”
“As an ‘ally’ I would have to help you fight your wars,” I said calmly. “That means the faery would be involved in the wars of men, breaking the Accords and allowing the rest of Faery into the affairs of men on a grand scale. Both Courts would declare war on Man and me that would last until one of us was dead, possibly all three. None of us want that.”
“Um, no, sir,” Harmond said weakly, surprised by my response. He hadn’t realized the depth of such a small word as ‘ally.’ “’Friendly associates’ is a fine compromise to devastation.”
Ellorn pushed the door open, leading a few brownies pushing a silver cart laden with trays of glasses and mugs, carafes of coffee and water and one small pitcher of pineapple juice in a press contraption. David and Steve were rising to help, but Ellorn hopped up on the table by way of a chair and waved them off quietly and politely. Zero was right behind him, cheerfully bouncing to the other side of Ellorn. Together they were passed the trays by several brownies on the cart. Once they had the trays up, they set about spreading glasses of water to everyone then steaming cups of coffee, all moving with brownie quickness along the tabletop. They placed small dishes filled with sugar, chopped dark chocolate, cocoa powder, vanilla bean shavings, and cinnamon stick shavings between every three or four people, along with covered dishes of milk.
Stopping before the officers, Ellorn chimed in singsong, “General Harmond, I apologize that we do not have any real cream available at the moment. All I have to offer is milk. Will that suffice?”
“Oh…Yes… Ellorn?” Harmond said, slowly, startled. Ellorn nodded at his name, smiling, and the General returned the smile, happy to have gotten the brownie’s name right. “I don’t think we use cream, anyway, so we’re fine, thank you.”
“Very good, sir,” Ellorn said, bowing slightly.
“Oh, my, God! This is wonderful coffee,” Barnett said, positively shocked, staring into his cup.
“Thank you, Colonel Barnett,” Ellorn said, again smiling and bowing slightly.
“And thank you, Ellorn,” I said, taking my first sip of the brew that so bewitched Barnett. And stopped my cup halfway back to the table. He was right. “Oh, wow. This
is
wonderful.”
Ellorn and Zero were incredibly pleased with themselves as they zipped off the table. The other brownies were equally thrilled as they began pushing the cart from the room. They were terribly cute.
“Colonel Morelli, you seem to hold an antagonism for the men you’re supposed to defend,” I said, after another sip. “That seems to conflict with your mission here. Why is that?”
“My apologies, Lord,” Morelli said, more obsequiously than he’d yet been. “My… animosity is outrage at the attitudes they seem to have at the huge injustice of their situation. They’ve committed grave crimes against you and the Army and yet are being treated in the most princely fashion.”