1 State of Grace Page 6

  “Hardly,” Silverleaf said with a laugh.

  “You can’t mean you live in squalor,” Wolf said, baiting him.

  It worked. The ambassador looked up at him with a new sense of hatred.

  “I have a very nice manor,” he said, his voice dripping with venom.

  “Perhaps you could host me when I make it to Alfar,” Wolf prodded.

  “Yes, of course,” Silverleaf said, his tone a mixture of anger and sarcasm. “You simply must stop by on your visit. Can we continue with the game?”

  Wolf drank some wine to hide his smile. Whether he lost the game or not, he was thoroughly enjoying needling the pompous elf. Still, he needed to win the game for it to really have any sting.

  “I’m sorry, Ambassador,” he said tossing ten gold into the pot and playing a card. “I’ll cast ‘pall of darkness.’ Your units all suffer a minus-two penalty to their attack values and are unable to attack this turn due to fear.”

  “I don’t think so,” Silverleaf replied. He too tossed ten gold into the pot and played a card. “'Ray of hope’ counters all dark magic spells in a single territory.”

  He smiled triumphantly. Wolf pretended to look concerned.

  “Very well,” he replied. He paid the pot another ten gold and said, “I’ll activate the ‘staff of darkness’ and use its ‘unholy strength’ ability. All of my units gain plus-three to their attack and defense values.”

  Silverleaf was unmoved. The smug smile remained on his face. With deliberation, he dropped another thirty gold into the pot.

  “I believe I’ll disenchant your staff of darkness,” he said, playing a card.

  Wolf sighed. He removed the “staff of darkness” from play.

  “All right, Ambassador,” he said, “let’s match things up.”

  “The dragon attacks all of your units, extending its range into your other mountain territory to also get the fungi,” Silverleaf declared.

  “Very well,” Wolf said. “My zombies and ghost attack your elves, and the goblins and vampire bats attack the pixies.”

  “The pixies use their charm ability on two of your goblins,” Silverleaf countered, tossing five gold for each card into the pot.

  Wolf said nothing. He just stared at the board and looked lost. Silverleaf grinned like a thief.

  “Anything else?” the elf prodded in an attempt to twist the knife. Wolf sighed. He tried to appear forlorn.

  “I guess there’s just one thing left for me to do,” he said. He tossed fifty gold into the pot. “I play ‘insidious design,’” he said, dropping the card on the table. “Your dragon is actually working for me.”

  As big as the gasp was for Silverleaf’s double-gargantuan, it was even bigger for Wolf’s masterstroke. Silverleaf raised a hand to silence the crowd. Surprisingly, everyone complied.

  “You can’t do that,” the ambassador said. “As you’ll recall, I’ve cast ‘ray of hope’ on the territory. No dark spell works.”

  Wolf felt the air go out of the room. Everyone thought victory had been snatched away. Wolf waited a moment before speaking.

  “I haven’t forgotten about your spell, Ambassador,” he said. “But ‘insidious design’ isn’t dark magic. It’s just a battlefield condition. Read the card.”

  Silverleaf snatched it off the table and examined it carefully. As he read, Wolf saw him turning the strange shade of purple again. He threw the card back on the table in disgust.

  “Your dragon attacks the pixies,” Wolf said.

  A moment later, it was effectively over. The zombies killed the elves, turning them into zombies under Wolf’s control. The dragon and goblins made short work of the pixies. Wolf was in control of an unstoppable army. Silverleaf had only three units in play. He could draw another one next turn, but he had nothing that could withstand the apocalypse Wolf was about to unleash on him. The game was over.

  “Would you like to concede, Ambassador,” Wolf asked. “I’d hate for you to lose more money, and the situation appears quite impossible.”

  The affability had gone from Wolf’s manner. Now that he was sure he’d won, he stared cruelly into Silverleaf’s eyes. Silverleaf glared at him. He knew he’d been sharked.

  “Yes, Mr. Dasher,” Silverleaf said through gritted teeth. “I concede the match.”

  There was a thunderous cheer from the crowd. The unthinkable had been done. The undefeatable Sagaius Silverleaf had lost. Wolf caught sight of Simone smiling and clapping politely.

  Wolf stood and offered his hand to Silverleaf. The elf grimaced at the thought, but he shook Wolf’s hand as he stood. The grip was too firm. He meant to cause Wolf pain. Wolf only smiled at him.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dasher,” he growled. “Simone!”

  She jumped when he called her name but quickly moved to his side. Silverleaf turned to go. Wolf kept his eyes locked on Simone.

  “Well, let’s say, au revoir,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

  Simone favored him with a sexy smile. Silverleaf didn’t notice. He swept from the room, practically dragging her behind him.

  Everyone crowded around Wolf and offered their congratulations. Several said they’d never seen anything like what he’d done. Many claimed Silverleaf had finally gotten his comeuppance and said all manner of bad things about him. It took several minutes to disengage from his new admirers. As he did so, a familiar voice greeted him.

  “That was incredible, Laddie!” the shabby noble exclaimed, clapping Wolf on the back. “Did you see the look on his face when he realized you’d taken his dragon? I’ll savor that for a month.”

  “Well, here’s something else you can savor,” Wolf said. He pulled a thousand gold from his winnings and handed it to his new friend.

  “Why would you do that, Laddie?” the old man whispered.

  “Because you had faith in me from the beginning,” Wolf said. “You were willing to stake me.” Wolf lowered his voice. “When you obviously couldn’t afford it.” He spoke at normal volume again. “That kind of loyalty deserves reward.”

  Tears lit the old man’s eyes. He straightened up in his shabby robes and adopted a very serious expression.

  “For the rest of my life and with all my honor, I am yours,” he said. “If you ever need anything, you need only call Baronet Miles Winston Heverley. I will give you all I can.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Wolf said. “I don’t know when the occasion would ever arise, but if it should I will call on you.”

  Heverley snapped a crisp salute. Wolf returned it. Then the baronet turned and walked away, looking prouder and taller than he had perhaps in years.

  Wolf turned back to the table and tipped William a hundred gold. The croupier nodded his thanks, then set about collecting the thirty thousand gold the house credited Wolf.

  Isabelle stood next to Wolf with her arms behind her back, her chest thrust out and twisting herself back and forth ever so slightly. The look on her face said, “Are you ready to go now?”

  “That was a very nice thing you did for Baronet Heverley,” she said.

  “It was nothing,” Wolf replied.

  “No, it was very definitely something,” she said. “He’s been coming here for months in the same clothes. No one will talk to him. He was a hero in the war, but now his money’s run out, the Queen took his land, and he’s a nobody. You made him important again. That was very sweet.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” Wolf said after a pause. They stared at one another for a moment. She pushed her shoulders back a little farther.

  “Is there anything else I can get for you?” she said, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Anything at all?”

  Wolf was tempted. The girl had been throwing herself at him all night, and she was very attractive. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to bed a woman quite so brazen. There was no challenge to it, and Wolf definitely liked the chase. Besides, he needed to report to Bartleby about what had happened.

  “Not tonight,” he said. “Perhaps another time.”


  He turned to go, ignoring her disappointed look. After scooping up his winnings, he started for the cashier’s window to turn his chips into gold.

  After a few steps, a thought occurred to him. Bartleby wouldn’t know what time his affair with Silverleaf at the club ended. Reporting in could definitely wait. He turned back.

  “Isabelle,” he called. She turned towards him with a hopeful look on her face. “I changed my mind.”

  Chapter 5: For the Glory of Alfheim

  (Ten Days before Revelation Day)

  May Honeyflower stretched to relieve her cramping muscles and mopped her brow as the hot wind blew strands of her caramel-colored hair into her face. Her mouth was dry, and she found herself wishing for a tall flagon of freschina, the light elfin wine that somehow always took the heat from the day.

  The wind blew dirt through the streets of Al-Adan, and it swirled around the ankles of the elves out walking, dancing with their feet before moving onto a new person. The throng of people trudged back and forth on the street en route to whatever business they had to conduct – shopping at the market, visiting friends, ordering goods from a smith. All of them appeared beaten down by the heat and the dust.

  May remembered a time when it wasn’t like this. The weather was always fair in Al-Adan. A pleasant breeze blew through the midday to cool the skin, and the afternoon sun was the perfect companion for a nap before the festivals at night. The war and the occupation had done so much damage to the former Alfheim she wept if she allowed herself to think too much about it.

  With an effort, she refocused her mind on the task at hand. She was positioned at a small café across from the Central Police recruiting office. The Elite Guard she commanded, to which the CP reported and which was responsible for security in Al-Adan, had received a tip from a typically anonymous source that the Sons of Frey were planning to bomb the recruiting station.

  May understood the reasoning. The Shendali fundamentalist sect was attempting to destabilize the government. By getting inside an allegedly secure facility and destroying it, they could sow fear and convince the people the government couldn’t protect them. It was sound strategy for a standard guerilla campaign.

  But at its heart it made no sense. The goal was to encourage the Urlanders to end their occupation and leave Alfar. But everything the Sons of Frey did to destabilize the situation only encouraged the Urlanders to stay longer. It was ultimately a self-defeating strategy.

  Of course, the Sons of Frey wanted more than for the Urlanders to leave. They hoped to topple the government and institute a theocracy similar to the one in Jifan. May was damned if that was going to happen, and she was tired of these whackos slaughtering her people in the name of God and Frey. She was no priest, but she knew this was not what Frey intended when he brought his message of God’s love to the elves. If it was, she wanted no part of it.

  She had three agents stationed in the street at various points, all keeping watch for the terrorist. She wanted to make sure he didn’t get the chance to cast his deadly spell. Her department was under fire for not rooting out the terrorist cell and putting an end to its activities. The Elite Guard had identified a Jifani elf named Mustique Starfellow as the ringleader, but they did not have a reliable description of him, nor did they have a lead on where to find him. At the moment, the best they could do was react to his attacks. She desperately wanted to foil this one to not only send the message that the people were safe from this sort of terrorism but also to let Starfellow know she was onto him. The Elite Guard had foiled three attacks in the last month, but every one of them came from an anonymous tip. Despite her bravado, she was no closer to finding and stopping Starfellow than when he began his campaign of terror.

  Presently, she focused on the people in the square looking for some sign of whom the bomber might be. It was next to impossible to pick out details among the many elves that passed back and forth. Black face after black face, sandy robe after sandy robe went by looking identical to every other elf in the street. She searched faces looking for anything that might appear strange or unusual. All she saw, though, was sweaty misery.

  A mother with three children drew her attention for a moment. The youngsters ran in three directions, forcing their mother to chase them down and call after them.

  May smiled. The children laughed gaily as they ran to and fro, their black skin shining in the too-warm sun and their long, black hair trailing behind them like a horse’s tail. The mother was frustrated but not angry. This was elfin life as it was supposed to be – before the war, before the decaying of the land.

  She returned her attention to the crowd and saw nothing but an anonymous throng. Everyone seemed to be on business elsewhere. A very few stopped in at the café for a drink or a bite. Sadly, none went to the recruiting station. It was just as well. Anyone headed in that direction would have been treated as a terrorist by May and her agents.

  For a moment, she worried that was the plan all along. Maybe the Sons of Frey called the tip in to use the Elite Guard to prevent people from joining the CP. May tried to tell herself that was far-fetched and preposterous, but she’d seen too much in the last four years to completely discount the theory.

  She looked to her other agents to see if they spotted anything. All of them shook their heads. May rubbed her eyes and mopped her brow again. She worried she would miss the bomber due to the heat and the boredom.

  A moment later, though, something caught her eye. A woman who reminded May very much of herself – younger, but with the same rich brown skin and bright, yellow eyes – was moving towards the recruiting station.

  May knew immediately something was wrong. The girl was dressed in white robes – funeral attire. She had her hands folded into her long sleeves, and she stared at the building forcefully. She was totally focused on where she was going and what she meant to do. No police recruit had that kind of intensity when enlisting.

  Quickly, May signaled to one of her men and then got up, rushing towards the woman, cocking a small crossbow as she did so. She hit the crowd at a run, and started elbowing her way through.

  “Move!” she shouted. “Everyone out of the way!”

  The initial reaction was one of anger, but once people saw her loaded weapon and her green Elite Guard uniform, they moved. Some of them only froze forcing her to dodge around them, or they backed into her path, slowing her down.

  Her heart pounded, terrified she wouldn’t be able to reach the terrorist in time. She couldn’t see if the agent she’d signaled was in position to take a shot.

  With one last shove, she at last escaped the throng of passersby and brought her crossbow to bear. The girl had ascended the steps and was nearly to the door of the station. She’d also put her hood up.

  “Stop!” May called. “Take another step, and you’re dead.”

  The girl froze. For a moment, she did nothing. May began her approach.

  “Hands above your head,” she ordered.

  The girl dropped her arms. The right hand held a small shaft of wood.

  “Wand!” May yelled, and the agent she signaled let fly with an arrow. It was just off the mark, hitting the target in the shoulder.

  The terrorist yelped in pain, but looked otherwise unaffected. She raised the wand.

  “For the glory of Alfheim!” she cried.

  May took aim and fired. The quarrel hit the girl between the shoulder blades, piercing her heart and killing her instantly. She sank to her knees and then fell over. The wand rolled from her hand without casting its explosive spell.

  The elf who missed his shot ran to where she fell and examined her. It was Meadowbrook, a relatively new member of the Guard.

  “She’s dead,” he reported. “Nice shooting, Captain.”

  “Scan the area,” she ordered. “Make sure there aren’t any more.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and moved off.

  May looked at the body of the terrorist and grieved. Elf-on-elf violence was so far from the Word of Frey it couldn’t
be comprehended. But here they found themselves. A beautiful young girl shot dead by a soldier because the girl intended to mass murder more elves. It was no wonder the land was dying. Elves had lost their way, and May had no idea who was going to show them back to the path of their ancestors.

  Chapter 6: Highly Irregular

  (Five Months before Revelation Day)

  Lieutenant Svetlana Markova entered Major Davidov’s office in Pushkingrad with a slight sense of trepidation. She did not like delivering bad news.

  She reflected that it wasn’t necessarily bad news. It might be nothing. Perhaps some clerk in the People’s Defense Bureau had made a mistake.

  Her instincts told her otherwise. What she discovered was highly irregular, and that just wasn’t the way things were done in either the PDB or the Phrygian Army. Everything was very orderly.

  She tried to show more than her usual confidence. She rolled her shoulders a little farther back to accentuate her large breasts, which stretched the fabric of her black, PDB uniform. Her back was straighter; her chin tipped a little high, causing her long, blonde hair to cascade fully down her back. She snapped a harsh salute at her superior, clicking her heels as she did so.

  “Major Davidov,” she said.

  “Ah, come in, Shadowcat,” he said, calling her by her service codename. “What can I do for you?”

  There was real affection for her in his voice, another reason she hated to deliver him bad news. They had developed a very good relationship in the past two years and even occasionally shared a drink at the officers’ club. She was certain he was interested in more than friendship, but she knew he would never act on his feelings. Fraternization with junior staff under one’s command was strictly forbidden.

  She thought he was foolish. In her opinion, when men and women are attracted to each other, their positions in the collective should not matter. After all, the state did not consider a person’s feelings when it made its assignments. Neither should it care about one’s feelings for others within one’s occupation.

  Davidov would never see it that way, though. Duty was his first mistress, and, if she told him not to take another, he would obey her. It was a shame. Svetlana wasn’t entirely certain if she was interested in becoming intimate with Boris Davidov, but she would have been willing to find out if he asked.