"I will get blanket." Nenzi was offering. Only then did I notice my hands were shaking. Adrenalin, more than likely, but I was worried, too. Had that blast been aimed at us?
"Reah, sit," Farzi pushed me toward the chair. He got me settled into it. "Drink," he tapped the cup I still held in my hand. Nenzi trotted into the room with the promised blanket.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just shaken up. I've been in worse situations."
"Reah will sit with us," Farzi turned to lion snake and crawled on the arm of the padded chair. Nenzi did the same on the other side. Nenzi rested his head on top of mine, Farzi settled on my right shoulder. I was covered in a blanket and lion snakes. Left with no other options, I sipped my drink and worried about the people affected by the blast.
* * *
"Reah? Sweetheart?" Teeg smelled as if he'd just gotten out of the shower. He didn't have a shirt on when I opened my eyes, so that was probably the case. I couldn't believe I'd fallen asleep after the day and night I'd had.
"You were tired, baby." Teeg leaned in to kiss my forehead. My lion snakes had deserted me at some point. "I sent them to bed. I can handle this part," Teeg answered my unspoken question.
"Why didn't you let me die before—when the ASD firebombed those fields? You wouldn't have had any worries about being Arvil's only heir." That thought had been running through my mind ever since I knew Teeg had been the one to lift me out of the fields. He'd then dumped me in the plantation swimming pool and jumped in after me. I felt like an idiot for not connecting the two incidents before.
"Reah, I'll do whatever is within my power to keep you alive. Yes, I needed to be Arvil's only heir, but I didn't rip up our marriage contract."
"To keep me under your thumb."
"Reah, the criminals Arvil associated with would have eaten you for breakfast."
"Thanks for having such faith in me," I snapped, trying to get away from him. "I'm good enough to haul into the fray when wizards or warlocks are attacking, but useless anywhere else, is that it?"
"Baby, I wanted to remove the target Arvil painted on your back. Every criminal outside the Reth Alliance would have come hunting—for both of us. Right now, I'm doing my best to eliminate the last of those evil-minded fuckers. We've finally gotten them down to manageable numbers. I don't know how the one who attacked us tonight got our whereabouts, but he's no longer a threat. We've eliminated that little problem. I'm officially in charge of his encampment, now."
"You don't know how he knew where we were, yet you ordered a ring from a jewelry shop?" I shook my head in disbelief.
"The shop's owner wouldn't have betrayed us, but that doesn't eliminate all his employees or stray customers," Teeg set my blanket aside and pulled me to my feet. "I'll check on that tomorrow."
"Did the people inside the shop die?" I was back to my original worry.
"Reah, two people died in the blast. Customers near the door. They were aiming at me, baby."
"Does this happen frequently?" I stretched as I walked toward the bedroom.
"Not often now, since we've cleaned out most of my would-be assassins, but there are still a few left. Zellar's rogue warlocks just complicate things." Teeg lifted me and I put a hand around his bare neck. Teeg has very wide shoulders and muscles anyone would be proud of. I leaned my head against his shoulder and reveled in the smell of him. Of course, I wasn't going to tell him that. It didn't matter, he chuckled and I knew he knew it anyway.
* * *
"Baby, do you want to come with me while I question the employees at the jewelry shop?" Teeg woke me with kisses.
"You'll let me come?"
"Yes. And if you sniff out anything from any of them, I expect you to tell me."
"All right." I started to scoot away from him so I could get off the bed.
"No, let's shake the bed a little first."* * *
"Harji, you're such a hairdresser."
Teeg and I were interviewing the last two employees at the jewelry store. None of them had known anything, but Harji was asking me questions about my clothing and shoes. His coworker, Mish, was elbowing Harji.
"Mish, honey, if I could look like that in those clothes, I'd never go home to you," Harji teased. Teeg wanted to laugh, I know he did. So did I, but I held back. Teeg had picked out what he wanted me to wear and it turned out to be a low-cut, breast-hugging red silk top with black pants and heeled boots. Teeg's ring was on my finger—he wasn't willing to let me take it off. Dangly diamond earrings rounded out the ensemble. My hair hung loose—if I were out with Teeg, that's what he wanted. I'd given up on trying to braid my hair with him around.
"You'll never have her hair, even if you wear a wig," Mish was poking at Harji again. "Face it, sweetie, you're stuck with me."
Of course, both of them had ogled Teeg, but he was Teeg San Gerxon. You didn't make a big deal out of that to his face. We thanked the owner and walked out of the shop. Astralan and Stellan were waiting for us, but thankfully, no one was waiting to hurl bombs at us today. Teeg pulled me close against his side anyway as we walked along.
"Teeg?" I looked up at him.
"What, baby?" His mind was miles away, I could tell by the slight frown on his face. I was about to bring him back from wherever he was.
"Teeg, what if those two you have in your apartment have some sort of homing beacon or locating chip? We've dealt with that before—well, you know. We have." I didn't want to say reptanoids or ASD aloud on the streets, since I had no idea where we were.
"Then we'd better do some checking. Astralan?" Teeg nodded toward the warlock, who folded us straight to the bedroom that held Teeg's captives.
"Tell the truth, do you have an implant that will allow someone to find you?" Teeg demanded right away. I didn't know what good that might do, but I was surprised.
"I do." One of the two warlocks—the shortest one—pointed to the back of his neck. Teeg cursed. "Stellan, go get Jes. Now." Stellan disappeared.
Jes spent the afternoon removing a tiny chip implanted in the back of a warlock's neck.
"I have the urge to destroy this, but I'm hoping it will bring somebody right to me, instead. They know we're here, they're just waiting for the right opportunity to strike. We got those last night, but now I have a feeling they have friends." Teeg was growling. "Astralan, take this chip to the plantation on Birimera and leave it on my desk. Inform Denast what it is and to be ready in case somebody shows up. Then get back here; we need to go back to Campiaa and ask a few questions of our friends, here." He jerked his head toward the rogue warlocks. They were still inside their cage and didn't look happy about their current situation.
"You look nice," Jes whispered while the rogues cringed and Teeg cursed and paced nearby.
"Thanks." Normally I didn't wear red—didn't like the color much. Teeg obviously did. Nenzi helped pack our bags packed later; Teeg was busy in his study; he and Stellan were closeted there, sending messages, no doubt.
* * *
Breszca Loffus stared into her drink glass. Graumil Loffus, her husband and candidate for High Council on Tulgalan, should have skated through the election. Now, some industrious journalist had gone digging into her past instead of that of her husband. The damaging information would be released in the morning.
Tulgalan law required that all parties be notified at least one full day in advance of the release of information, if the information could damage the parties in any way. It gave them time to refute the information in case it turned out to be false.
Breszca wished she could prove it false. She couldn't. Every bit of it was true. How the journalist had managed to get his hands on the adoption records when they were supposed to remain secret for one hundred turns might remain a mystery.
Breszca hadn't even seen the baby after it was born, signing it over quickly to the state. Someone had adopted the little girl and named her Raedah. Breszca had only been nineteen when she became pregnant—she'd put off getting the birth control chip and then he had come along.
Breszca had just gone to university and drinking with new friends was her favorite thing to do. Denus was handsome, no doubt about it, and Breszca couldn't help herself when he'd invited her to his bed. She'd gotten pregnant after only two encounters, but didn't learn of that fact until she'd left Denus behind for Alvis.
She'd listed Alvis' name as the child's father—Alvis who'd somehow gotten killed in a hovercraft accident. Now, merely the fact that she'd put the baby up for adoption wouldn't have raised eyebrows—it was the responsible thing to do for one so young and unprepared for parenthood. What the journalist had found when he went through the records was that Raedah couldn't have been Alvis' child—the blood types and DNA didn't match.
Breszca couldn't imagine anyone going to that much trouble just to get Alvis' records after learning she'd had the child. Anyone else would have taken the records at face value. If she'd ever wanted to kill anyone, the journalist now topped that list. It was a crime not to report the true parent of a child put up for adoption—not to notify said parent that they had a child in order to give them the opportunity to take it instead of consigning it to state care at state expense.
Generally it was a good law and one that her husband had supported over the years as a magistrate in the capital city. Now, Breszca's past was undermining his bid for High Council by flouting that law. Who knew where Denus was? She hadn't seen him since she'd dumped him in favor of Alvis.
The other things the journalist had ferreted out about Raedah were perhaps even more bizarre, but Breszca wouldn't be held accountable for that. Raedah had married Addah Desh at the age of twenty-one. She'd been his eighth and last wife he'd taken, gotten pregnant shortly after the marriage and died after the birth. Still not so bizarre, until you learned that the child Raedah had wasn't Addah Desh's but his second oldest son's—Edan Desh.