“Someone will mention it. Do you want a divination?”
Elara shook her head. “Conrad didn’t get inside to take anything to anchor the vision, and I’m not sending anyone to retrieve anything. Whatever took those people could come back. Besides, they would leave the signatures of their magic and their scent at the scene, and I don’t want to chance it. I just need d’Ambray to see reason.”
She stared at Hugh some more.
“We can always poison him, you know,” Savannah said.
“Hugh?”
“Mhm. Something quick and sweet. He’ll fall asleep and never wake up. Won’t even know what hit him.”
Elara grimaced. “We can’t. We need his army.”
“Men.”
“Yes. Can’t live with them, can’t kill them.” Elara crossed her arms.
“What’s upsetting you?” Savannah asked.
“He makes me angry, Savannah. Raging angry.”
“Has it been calling to you?”
“It always calls to me.” Elara sighed.
“Do you worry you’ll manifest?”
“I worry he may push me too far.”
“Have you thought about going the smarter route?” Savannah asked. “When you offer men opposition, they take it as a challenge. Sometimes a softer approach is better. A bit of flattery here and there, an appeal to his pride, a moment of helplessness. You know.”
Of course Elara knew. She’d done it before when she’d had to and she was good at it. “This one is too… aware. Besides, if I could bring myself to do it, I would’ve already done it. He opens his mouth and I want to kill him. I’ve actually had fantasies of ripping his head off, Savannah.”
The older witch looked at her for a long moment.
“What?”
“Don’t do it in front of his Dogs.”
“Hopefully, I won’t do it at all. If things get too bad, I’ll divorce him.”
“Better sooner than later. People aren’t marbles. You can’t keep them separate by the color of the uniform they wear. The longer his people stay with us, the more ties we forge.”
“The harder it will be to purge the Dogs from us. I know.”
“What do you want done about Vanessa?” Savannah asked.
“Nothing. I’ve handled it. Her choices are her own.”
“Betrayal should be punished, Elara.”
“What would I punish her for, Savannah? Bad judgement? Trust me, he’s punishment enough.”
Savannah nodded and left the room.
Elara raised her hand and touched Hugh’s chest, tracing the line of hard muscle under the skin with her fingers. The projection rippled as if liquid.
It was too bad… If it was anyone but him…
She laughed quietly at the absurdity of it and dismissed the construct with a wave of her fingers.
6
Hugh lowered his hands and took a deep breath. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He’d pushed himself for the better part of an hour, alternating the heavy bag and weights with weapon practice. His body finally realized that food was once again plentiful, and he was starting to rebuild the muscle he’d lost. He would need it.
Next to him Lamar propped himself against the stone wall of the keep. Hugh leaned next to him and began pulling at the wraps on his fists. In front of them the western end of the bailey stretched, filled to the brim with tents. It had been three weeks, and still more than half of his people were camping out in the open. He’d left the barracks renovation to Elara. She had insisted on it, and he gave it to her to avoid having another delay on the moat. His wife was dragging her feet on renovations. At this rate, they would still be in tents at first frost.
“What did you find out?” Hugh asked.
“Pretty much what we suspected.” Lamar kept his voice quiet. “Elara is at the top of the food chain. Below her are the two advisers. Savannah oversees the covens, infrastructure, and internal administrative issues. She also heads their legal department. Dugas deals with logistics, imports, exports, trade agreements and so on. Their powers overlap somewhat, so they have oversight over each other. Elara views them both as her parents. No clue what happened to her real family.”
In a war against Elara, the witch and the druid would be priority targets.
“What about Johanna?”
“Research and development. There are other administrators. The head accountant, for example. But none of them hold the power those three do. Most major decisions are made by them and Elara. Elara has the power to overrule them, but she almost never does. There is a fifth person involved too.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” Lamar said. “But some of our people have seen him. He moves very fast and seems to disappear into thin air. We don’t know what or who he is. We’re not getting anywhere with the locals. They’re all nice and friendly until we start asking leading questions about Elara and the Remaining.”
“Keep digging. There are thousands of Departed between the castle and the town. Someone will talk.”
“They’re really interested in our barrels.”
“Of course they are.”
A tent nearby collapsed. Iris crawled out of it, swore, and kicked it.
Lamar fell silent. Hugh glanced at him. “What?”
The centurion hesitated.
“Lamar?”
“None of the bulldozer operators showed up for work this morning.”
Fury began to rise in him. “Why?”
“According to the foreman, they and their bulldozers have something more important to do. They are digging on the north side.”
Hugh forced himself to sound calm. “Are we upside down on the salvage?”
“No. According to the smiths, we still have three days of work paid for.”
“Did you tell that to the bulldozer foreman?”
“I did.” Lamar nodded. “He said the orders came from Elara. He says he isn’t allowed to talk to us about it.”
Hugh tossed the hand wraps on the wall and marched to the keep.
Elara did most of her business in the small room off her bedroom, where she kept a desk, a computer she could access during tech, and paper files. Today she sat behind that desk, her head down, looking at some papers. Hugh strode through the door. A heavy-set Latino man was standing next to her, pointing at a paper in front of her. They both looked up at him.
Hugh unhinged his jaws. “Leave.”
The man grabbed his papers and took off. Hugh waited until he ran down the stairs and turned to Elara.
“Yes?” she asked.
“You pulled the bulldozers off the moat.”
She leaned back. “Yes, I did.”
His temper threatened to gallop off like a horse running for its life and Hugh made a valiant effort to hold on to it. “For what reason?”
“I felt like it.”
He stared at her. Elara stared back.
Hugh bit off words, pronouncing them with icy exactness. “Our agreement was, I get the salvage and you let us have the bulldozers. I have three days’ worth of salvage credit left.”
“Yes, but we didn’t specify when the bulldozers will be available to you. There is nothing in that agreement about any kind of timeline. You will get your bulldozers back. Just not right now.”
He couldn’t kill her. If he killed her, he would have to kill everyone else in this damn settlement. His rage was boiling over and he distilled it to a single word. “When?”
“When I feel like it,” she told him.
She was toying with him now.
Elara reached over, picked up a folder from the desk, and held it in front of her so only her eyes were visible.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for your head to explode. I don’t want to miss it, but I don’t want to be splattered with gore.”
He reached over, plucked the folder from her fingers, and dropped it on the desk. “I’ve explained the reason for the moat. It’s an urgent matter. We’ve been here for three weeks and my people are still in tents. They haven’t been paid.”
Elara crossed her arms on her chest. “Nothing you said indicates that I’m in breach of our contract. It specifies that quarters for your soldiers will be provided in a reasonable time. I can’t help that my definition of reasonable is different from yours.”