The Blending 07 - Deceptions, page 35
Honrita drifted out of the shop after the small man, right now only interested in whether he would make his next stop or go directly to deliver the note he’d picked up. His next scheduled stop was rather close to this last one, and that was why she’d chosen to leave her note here. The man’s next actions would be easily seen …
And they were. The small man went directly to his next stop, making no effort to take off in another direction. That left Honrita free to go somewhere herself, namely the place she’d lost the man two of the times she’d tried to follow him. But those times she’d been behind the man instead of in front of him, so to speak, and she hadn’t been certain about where he was going. Now she was certain, and was also determined not to lose her guide again.
The area she got to first was very nearly deserted. It had been allowed to become very run-down during the reign of the nobles, and had therefore housed beggars and thieves and others who lived on the shady side of the law. The new government officials had rid the city of everyone who was unwilling to work an honest job, but hadn’t yet gotten around to rebuilding the neighborhood. It would certainly be taken care of in its turn, but there were other, more populous, places that had to be rebuilt before this one would be done.
A doorway stood open and inviting, its door hanging from its one remaining hinge. Honrita made sure that no one was in the rickety building, and then she accepted the doorway’s invitation. It was the perfect place to wait for the small man, just ahead of the spot where she’d lost him twice. She hadn’t been able to hurry and still remain unnoticed, so when she’d reached this street the small man had been nowhere in sight.
“It would have been nice if I could have taken control of that little messenger boy, but for some reason it didn’t work,” Honrita mumbled to herself as she stepped into the dimness that would hide her presence. “His Spirit magic isn’t quite as strong as mine, so I don’t understand why I couldn’t control him. That second week of class probably could have taught me how to get around the problem, but they didn’t let me take the second week of class. I’ll have to show those people just how much I appreciate being cheated.”
It would have been nice to let her justified anger start to roil again, but Honrita knew she couldn’t allow that luxury. If she did, the small man would know instantly that someone stood in hiding, just as she would have known. Her only chance was to calm herself so completely that she was serenity itself, and that she did know how to do. Then the small man would have no idea she was there and would continue on to the place—and the man—Honrita was determined to locate.
Honrita was already wrapped in silent balance when the small man appeared. She visualized gently rolling clouds to keep herself from thinking and feeling, and was therefore able to watch the small man closely. He hurried to a place to the right of where Honrita stood but on the opposite side of the street, looking around himself constantly. When he felt confident that he was alone, he went to a blank wall and pulled on a torch bracket. Part of the blank wall popped open inwardly to make a door, and the man was inside instantly to close the door behind himself. That left nothing but a blank wall again, and Honrita allowed herself a faint smile. No wonder she’d lost the man twice …
There was no way to know how long the small man would be in coming out again, so Honrita began to compose herself for something of a wait. Just as she was settling down the secret door opened again, and the small man reappeared. He reached to the bracket that had come forward with the opening of the door and pushed it back straight again. The straightening of the bracket caused the door to disappear into the wall again, and then the small man hurried away.
Honrita waited until the small man was completely gone, and then she left her hiding place. The small man’s mind and talent had been ragged with fear and uncertainty, the relief of his departure only a small glow behind the rest. Honrita thought she knew why the man felt like that, an understanding that hastened her footsteps toward the silently waiting blank wall.
It was necessary for Honrita to stand on her toes to reach the torch bracket, something the man she’d followed hadn’t had to do. The man wasn’t small physically, only in his own self-image, so that was the way Honrita saw him. Even his talent was decently large, but his inner attitudes kept him from being anything more than a messenger. Honrita had been that way herself before the training class woke the proper self-image, so she had very little patience for the man’s lacks.
It took a bit more strength than expected to pull the bracket forward, but once Honrita accomplished it the hidden door opened smoothly, quickly, and silently. Three steps brought Honrita far enough inside to close the door behind herself, which was rather easily done. The door had been hung with superb balance, so pushing it shut was no problem at all. It was—
Honrita broke off the useless, foolish thoughts about the door as she turned away from it, no longer willing to keep from thinking about what she was soon to find. She’d been dreaming of this moment, and hesitating with nervousness now was completely unacceptable. Her dreams were about to come true, but only if she behaved in the proper way.
With the door to the outside closed, the fairly long and narrow hallway she stood in was dim with the light of only a single lamp. Directly ahead of her she was able to make out what seemed to be another door, and there was definitely someone alive behind that door. For that reason she quickly made her way over to her objective, pulled on the latch-string, and stepped into a fairly large room.
“How clever of you to find your way in here,” a man’s voice said with amusement, the man himself standing only a few feet away. “It pains me to tell you that this intrusion won’t accomplish what you expect it to.”
“But of course it will,” Honrita disagreed at once with a smile to match the one the man showed. He was tall and thin, just as he was supposed to be, and the burning stare of his gaze was almost painfully familiar. “I’ve come here to ask to be allowed to join you.”
“Dama, you’ve managed to surprise me,” Holdis Ayl replied as he continued to stare at her. “What makes you think that I will allow you to join me? One more follower added to the numbers already dedicated to my cause will make no difference whatsoever.”
“Adding this follower will make a great deal of difference,” Honrita countered, looking around to see the sparse furnishings she’d expected to find. The chairs were all straight-backed and unpadded, the eating table small, the bed barely larger than a cot … “The man who was just here has Spirit magic, but he’s afraid to use it properly. I’m stronger than he is, and I’m not afraid to use my talent. You’ve been in hiding for much too long a time, and I’m determined to see that change. You deserve to be in charge, and I want to help make it happen.”
“You made that statement without using your talent in an effort to convince me,” Ayl commented, still staring at her unblinkingly with that faint smile curving his lips. “If I knew your reasons for coming here like this, I might be better able to judge how much truthfulness you speak with.”
“My reasons are quite simple,” Honrita murmured as she drifted a bit closer to the man. “My father was just like you, a man meant for greatness that everyone feared, but he was never able to accomplish that greatness. I wasn’t old enough or strong enough to help him, but now that I’m both I’d like to make up for my previous lacks, so to speak. If I help you gain what’s rightfully yours, it will be like giving him help when he needed it.”
“I do mean to rule, but it won’t ever be directly,” Ayl said, now studying her in a different way. “I know what I need to accomplish to gain my due, and you would merely be a tool to facilitate that accomplishment. You will never have the power in your own hands, a fact you must be able to understand and accept.”
“I do understand, and I do accept,” Honrita assured him in the same murmur, now close enough to look up into those very familiar eyes. “All I ask is the chance to serve you—in every way possible.”
“I believe I will allow it, at least for the time being,” Ayl agreed after a long moment of silence. “Would you care for some tea while I explain what I’ll require of you first?”
“Yes, yes, I would love some tea,” Honrita answered, all but breathless over her acceptance. “I knew you would be able to make use of my talent at once, so I’m ready and eager to begin.”
“Excellent,” Ayl said as he moved past her to walk toward a tea urn. “What I require first is another four people with your strength, but in the other four aspects. You must put those people under your influence one by one, and once you’ve accomplished that the five of you must Blend.”
“So that you’ll have a Blending of your own to use,” Honrita exclaimed as she watched Ayl pour her tea. “How delightfully delicious an idea. And what will you use our Blending for?”
“Why, to gain control over the members of a High Blending already in an official position, of course,” Ayl answered as he turned back to her with the teacup. “Why struggle to oust those in power when you can make them your puppets instead? Members of High Blendings will be cautious around other High talents, but Middle talents will be all but ignored. That’s always been a blind spot just waiting to be taken advantage of.”
“And we’re about to use that blind spot to gain you the place that was meant to be yours,” Honrita said as she accepted the cup of tea. “Yes, the first step in the process is to find other strong Middle talents, and I’ll get right to it as soon as I finish this tea. Do you have anyone in particular in mind, or will just any strong Middle talents do?”
“I’ve already located the people I want, so I’ll give you their names and where they can be found,” Ayl replied as he gestured her to a chair before taking one of his own. “I meant to use that fool you followed here to get the rest, but his cowardice for anything but fetching messages delayed my plans. And I appreciate the warning you gave in the message you sent. Telling me you would soon be here saved your life, as I would have destroyed an unexpected caller. Destroying you would have been such an incredible waste.”
Honrita smiled at the compliment before taking a sip of her tea, so excited she could barely contain the emotion. With her help Ayl’s plans would become a reality, and then they would be in control of a High Blending able to defend the position they would be required to take over. Ayl pictured himself as the only power behind that puppet Blending, and that was perfectly all right. By the time their puppets were in place, Ayl himself would be her puppet.
Ayl began to tell her about the other talents he had already picked out for her to control, and she listened carefully with most of her attention. She herself had no way of knowing who had the proper amount of strength, but knowing things like that was Ayl’s strong suit. Honrita would do exactly as he said, giving him just what he needed when he needed it—in the way of pawns. Honrita had heard many people talking about the elusive Holdis Ayl before she’d been sent to that prison house, and just before she’d escaped she’d realized that she had to find the man.
The temptation was there for Honrita to sigh, but that reaction was part of her old self. These days Honrita acted instead of sighing, and her plans were well on the way to becoming reality. She’d tested Ayl by letting him know that he could have her body if he wanted it, and rather than accept her offer he’d asked if she wanted tea. That made the man exactly like her father, and the situation would have been funny if it hadn’t been so filled with bitterness.
Honrita had been deeply in love with her father, and had wanted nothing more than for him to return her love. Instead, the vile man had ordered her around and used her in every way but the way she yearned for, ignoring her completely as though she were invisible. And then, before Honrita had found a way to gain the love she needed so desperately, the miserable man had suddenly died.
But Ayl would not do the same, at least not until Honrita had everything she wanted from him. He’d already accepted her to do his chores, and in a little while he would give her the love her father never had. Her father had known he was born for greatness and had made every effort to achieve it, but the accomplishment had slipped through his fingers. Helping Ayl would be like helping her father, and she would see that he did achieve his greatness.
And then she would take it right out of Ayl’s hands, paying her father back for all the hurt he’d given her. She would have the greatness, the worthless female offspring her father had scorned so well and so often, proving her father had been wrong in everything he’d said and done. It would be marvelous, and she, too, would never flaunt her power for others to see. That way she would be able to keep the power …
Twenty-six
Kail Engreath returned to the very large house he shared with fifteen other people, his mood so good that he should have been whistling. After only five days his training was over, and so was that of most of the people who would be in his group of experimenters. That meant they could all get together in the house’s meeting room tomorrow, and start to talk about what they would do. There had to be any number of things possible to do with talent that weren’t already being done, and his group would earn Astindan citizenship as soon as they began to find those things.
“Kail, I’m delighted to see that you’re back early too,” Kail heard, and he turned just inside the door to see Renton Frosh. “Does this mean that you’ve also finished your training?”
“It certainly does, Ren,” Kail answered with a grin as he closed the door. “Did you get that tea in the sitting room, or did you have to go to the kitchen for it? I can definitely use a cup of it myself.”
“It’s in the sitting room, which means they expected some of us to get back early,” Ren replied with his own grin. “Isn’t it nice when people have confidence in you?”
“It’s something I’ve certainly been getting used to,” Kail said as he and Ren headed for the sitting room open to the use of all the house’s residents. “If someone suddenly started to doubt me again, I might not even remember how to act.”
Ren chuckled to show he appreciated the joke, but he didn’t comment. Kail knew that that was probably because Ren was fully aware of the fact that it would take years before the two of them got over what their fathers had done to them. Assuming they ever got over having been told for so long that they were useless and failures. They both knew perfectly well that they weren’t useless failures, but deep down there was still that tiny whisper of doubt …
But thoughts like that were for another day, one that wasn’t as pleasant as this one. Kail walked into the sitting room and headed straight for the tea service, nodding to the other residents of the house who had gotten back before him. There were only three of them, and they—as well as he and Ren—wore the new clothes the Astindans had provided. The clothing wasn’t fancy, nothing like what they’d worn in Gandistra, but they were pleasantly colored and decently made from material that would not wear out too quickly.
“Don’t be so disappointed that Asri isn’t back yet,” Ren murmured from Kail’s left as Kail poured himself a cup of tea. “Somi—Tansomia—isn’t back yet either, and I happen to know that she’s doing very well in her class. Have you managed to speak to Asri about joining our group?”
“Not yet,” Kail answered with a sigh as he turned away from the tea service with his cup. “I’ve made up my mind to do it a dozen times, but somehow she and I end up talking about everything but the group. Now that the group will be having its first meeting tomorrow, the subject should come up all on its own.”
“And about time,” Ren said, obviously in a teasing mood. “We’re all so good we ought to start to get results almost immediately, and it would be a shame for Asri to lose out on the credit.”
“I’ll definitely speak to her before we sit down to dinner,” Kail promised, the words for himself as well as for Ren. It had been lovely seeing Asri every evening, but it would be even lovelier to see her during the day as well.
Kail and Ren and some others chatted until almost dinnertime, and then they joined the others in setting the table and carrying out the various dishes. There were four Astindans employed in the residence who did the cooking and general cleaning, but Kail and the others had been told that that didn’t mean the residents could just sit around. Each resident was responsible for keeping his or her own bedchamber neat and tidy, each had to pick up after him or herself, and all had to help at mealtimes. After their time working in the fields no one had protested, and in fact they each seemed to enjoy helping out.
But the thing bothering Kail was that Tansomia had gotten back only a few minutes after him, but Asri hadn’t shown up until the usual time. Granted she was no later than usual in getting back, but that shouldn’t have been. If she’d finished her training the way the rest of them had …
It would have been nice if Kail could have spoken to Asri as soon as she walked in, but that wasn’t possible. Asri had to feed her baby son and then put him to bed before she could get her own meal, and interfering with the effort would just have delayed Asri even more. Kail waited for Asri to join them at table, but by the time she did he’d decided to wait a bit longer to ask the most pressing questions. No sense in asking about something that might be embarrassing for her where everyone could also hear all about it …
Meals at the residence were tasty and filling but never lavish. Kail was as hungry as ever, and everyone else seemed to feel the same. The food disappeared with its usual rapidity, and afterward everyone carried plates and bowls and cutlery and cups into the kitchen so that they might be washed by the staff. Only then was Kail free to take Asri aside, so that they might speak privately.
