"If he or any of you harm Norian, I may not wait for the courts." I was just about to leave, too.
"I will handle it," Kifirin showed up, blowing smoke. "You will not have to trouble yourself, avilepha. You, both of you," Kifirin took a long, hard look at Norian's parents, "I suggest you resign yourself to what is to come—your oldest child will not be able to hold himself back—he has developed a taste for killing. Your choice will prove to be a poor one." Kifirin disappeared.
"Who was that?" Norian's mothers quavered.
"Kifirin, Lord of the Dark Realm," I said as calmly as I could. "I think he just passed judgment on Yaredolak. Aryn, Aurelius, can you see our guests back to the shuttle station? They won't be staying." I turned and stalked out, following the path Norian had taken.
* * *
"Nori?" I walked carefully into his office—I had no idea what I might find.
"Breah-mul?" Norian was holding his head in his hands.
"Honey, those are just people you don't know. And they don't know you." I pulled his hands down and leaned in to kiss his forehead.
"Are they going to stay?"
"I sent them to the shuttle station. Aryn and Aurelius know to send them to the space station. They can wait there for the next transport. They won't be welcome back here, honey."
"Good. Lissa, what are we going to do about Solar Red and Black Mist? What are we going to do about their rogue wizards and those reptanoids?"
"Is that what you're calling them—reptanoids?" I sat on the edge of Norian's desk and lifted his head up, bumping my forehead against his.
"Lendill came up with that term when I talked to him about it and showed him the vids."
"Uh-huh. Lendill's just pretty darn handy, isn't he?"
"Until you came along, he and Ildevar were the only family I had."
"Well, you have a bigger family now. You might even get an invitation to go fishing with the Falchani twins if you stop monopolizing all my time."
"They fish?" Norian looked quite surprised.
"Among other things. If you've never been skiing, they'll take you for that, too." Just the thought of it made me smile.
"But I like monopolizing your time."
"Of course you do. Let's find something to drink."
Chapter 13
"I know this doesn't mean anything in the midst of everything else, but Mazareal has reported problems with the atmosphere, dying crops and fluctuations in their climate reports—none of which have any logical reason behind them. They've been green for a very long time—and until recently, the sun has been stable, the planet stable and all that," Lendill waved his comp-vid at Norian when he sailed into Norian's office. Lendill had returned to Le-Ath Veronis the day before and had gotten the update on Norian's former parents from Lissa. Norian still couldn't bring himself to talk about it.
"Can you get somebody else on that?" Norian muttered. He was still backtracking on the reptanoids he'd uncovered—looking to find names and where they'd traveled from, hoping it would lead him to Black Mist's headquarters.
"I'll find somebody," Lendill punched up a list of available agents.
"Let me know what you find," Norian mumbled and turned back to his work.
* * *
"Lissa, we've been waiting for you to come back for longer than a few hours at a time," Drake, Drew, Gavin and Tony were all inside my office. Heathe and Grant had taken off the minute all four of them arrived. I was studying the monthly tax reports and the disbursements that Kyler had made. I hadn't seen either of my nieces for a while—not since the whole Cloudsong debacle. That seemed like a hundred years gone, now, with everything that had happened in between.
"Why have you been waiting?" I pretty much knew the answer, but wasn't sure I wanted the information that came with that answer.
"To tell you who leaked your whereabouts to a Black Mist spy," Tony said. Well, he'd once held a position close to that of Norian's, so he was taking point on this.
"You found a Black Mist spy. Here, on Le-Ath Veronis." My voice was flat as I stared at four of my mates. They'd pulled in additional chairs so they could all sit.
"She's in the dungeon—the Council has already passed the death sentence, they're only waiting for you to talk to her if you want before sentence is carried out." Gavin provided that particular piece of information.
"And you're holding back the worst piece, aren't you? The one who gave her the information to begin with."
"Baby, it's hard, telling you this part," Drake said. "The Council wants to prosecute, but Aurelius and Aryn have convinced them to table this discussion until you knew everything."
"What charges are they planning to levy?" I asked. I wanted to shiver—the news was coming, and until now, I'd successfully held it away from me.
"Treason," Drew said. "That's all it is at this stage. A defense can be mounted."
"Of course it can," I muttered. I knew the Council. Knew that many of the oldest vampires on the Council had once been Heads of Vampire Councils on their respective former planets. They hadn't kept their race alive and thriving by being anything less than ruthless. If a vampire made a misstep, they were eliminated. I'd seen it myself, first with Wlodek and then with Flavio. If I thought they might be anything other than merciless in this matter, my heart would be beating at a more normal rhythm.
"Tell me," I muttered, standing and turning away from all of them. A painting hung behind my desk that I seldom looked at, once I took my seat. Winkler had hired a vampire artist to paint it for me. He'd taken vid images of the Green Fae settlement, when the trees were flowering. Little Toff was sitting on the ground, playing with a basket of blooms there among the trees. I figured Corent or Redbird had originally been in the image, but the artist had been instructed not to paint them. Only Toff remained. The whole thing made me want to weep.
"Giff revealed your location," Tony said. "She thought Pearlina was a friend. She knew it was wrong to tell anyone, but she did it anyway. She didn't think the woman was a spy."
If I'd been stabbed in the heart, it might have hurt less. "We've questioned Giff extensively, some of it under compulsion," Gavin went on quickly. I heard him as if I were listening underwater. "She knew it could harm you. She knew Pearlina might pass the information to others, because Pearlina likes to gossip. It's true she didn't know that Pearlina was a spy, but Giff was angry with you, cara. Didn't care if you might be hurt in all this."