Blooded (Lisen of Solsta Book 3) Read online

  Blooded

  Lisen of Solsta

  Book III

  D. Hart St. Martin

  Cover art and design by

  Aidana WillowRaven/WillowRaven Illustration and Design Plus

  http://WillowRaven.weebly.com

  Editing by Todd Barselow

  http://www.toddedits.com

  Copyright © 2014 D. Hart St. Martin

  Published by D. Hart St. Martin

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 – Blood Sport

  Chapter 2 – Never Say Never

  Chapter 3 – Settling In

  Chapter 4 – Honor

  Chapter 5 – The Empir’s Will

  Chapter 6 – Korin of Thristas

  Chapter 7 – Lies and Consequences

  Chapter 8 – A Noble Man

  Chapter 9 – Comings and Goings

  Chapter 10 – An Heir Emerges

  Chapter 11 – Distractions

  Chapter 12 – A Bad Break

  Chapter 13 – We Will Find Her

  Chapter 14 – Nobody Can Know

  Chapter 15 – A Child of The People

  Chapter 16 – Hope, Just a Little

  Chapter 17 – Sight

  Chapter 18 – Not Long Now

  Chapter 19 – Left Unsaid

  Chapter 20 – An Arrest is Made

  Chapter 21 – Garlan Justice

  Chapter 22 – Fragile, not Fractured

  Chapter 23 – Homecoming

  Chapter 24 – In Defense of Her Will

  Chapter 25 – Greatdark

  Chapter 26 – Until the World Ends

  Chapter 27 – War is Coming

  Chapter 28 – Sometimes, a Mad Notion

  Chapter 29 – The Answer in the Plain

  Chapter 30 – In the Middle of It

  Chapter 31 – Softer than Velvet, Smoother than Silk

  Cast of Characters

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map of Garla

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  blood sport

  I am Ariannas Ilazer. Lisen doesn’t live here anymore.

  After leaving the Empir’s office, she’d followed Captain Palla down the tight dark stairs to the Keep’s dungeon, and all the while her mind could only offer a litany of duties awaiting her. Deal with the watcher. Explain yourself to the Council. Set the tone for your reign. Stand up straight. Be an example. Put the murder behind you.

  She entered the cell, despite her stomach turning at that last thought, and took her place beside Hermit Eloise, the slippery sooth who had set her on this path to madness. And here, in the same cell where she’d nearly died only an hour ago, with Eloise beside her, she stood alone.

  This is what it means to be the Empir, to forevermore stand alone. Why had she leaped so far and so high to achieve this horrible station? Because, you dumb twit, this woman here beside you obligated you to it.

  She had planned very carefully for that deadly moment with her brother. She’d struggled through it over and over, straining to find a way to triumph without self-destruction. She’d even convinced herself it wasn’t her fault her brother was such an ass. Practical, her solution. Workable, her solution. Economical, her solution. A little messy, but—

  There went her stomach again.

  He’d practiced for years with the sword and the knife. Korin had said her brother had shown no interest in the art of the skill, but he had practiced. Her? She’d had a few months. How could a few months compete with so many years? She’d had to find another solution, and she had—the push.

  So, in the end, she had pushed. Pushed him to end it.

  Put the damn murder behind you, the voice within ordered.

  But I was wrong. The dagger cannot be unstabbed, the push cannot be unpushed. What’s done is done. Lisen doesn’t live here anymore.

  Before her, manacled to the wall, stood the watcher, the woman who’d gotten caught up in something even her wily mind couldn’t have envisioned. And Ariannas and Eloise were about to discover if it were possible to wipe out her memories, her strength and her power, to neutralize this woman whose reason for existing resided in her skill with the push. And I’m going to accomplish this the same freaking way I just murdered my brother.

  Enough with the murder! the not-so-small-voice in her head screamed.

  “Lisen?”

  Ariannas surfaced at the sound of Eloise’s voice, realizing as she did so that she’d been standing there for several minutes staring at Opseth without seeing the rogue while her own mind had wandered through a reality she didn’t comprehend. If she wasn’t Lisen, then who was she? Because this Ariannas she was supposed to become bore no resemblance to Lisen of Solsta nor to Lisen Holt. This Ariannas did, however, look very much like the not-Lisen she was now.

  “Yes?” Ariannas responded, confusion her new best friend because confusion didn’t demand understanding.

  “Any thoughts?” Eloise said, Ariannas only realizing after the fact that Eloise had said this once already.

  Thoughts. Oh, she had thoughts. None sharable, however.

  “I thought you’d know what to do. You’re the manipulator. Manipulate her,” Ariannas finally replied, nodding in their prisoner’s direction.

  “No,” the hermit replied. “You are the one. I manipulate events. You manipulate minds.”

  Eloise was not her friend, no matter how many times the hermit claimed to be. Eloise had stolen her off to Solsta Haven to hide her from a brother who might not have turned out to be such a putz if Eloise hadn’t poisoned their mother’s mind against the boy from the beginning. Eloise had stolen her memory and sent her to Earth, leaving her to believe she was human. But she wasn’t and never had been. And through it all, Eloise had lied to her over and over again, but, for just a little longer, she needed Eloise so she’d keep her around.

  Ariannas caught the watcher staring at her. “What’s your name?” she asked the woman, compelling her to reply whether she wanted to or not.

  “Opseth. Opseth Geranda.”

  “Ah, Opseth.” Ariannas clasped her hands behind her back and began to pace slowly in front of the woman. “My brother paid you well, didn’t he.” She raised her hand and waved off a response. “No, no. That wasn’t a question.”

  “Don’t toy with her.”

  Ariannas whirled on the hermit. “I’m not toying! And don’t tell me what to do when you claim to know nothing.”

  Eloise touched Ariannas’ arm, tilted her head and led Ariannas to the other side of the cell, away from their quarry. With their backs to the manacled woman, they whispered urgently.

  “We must get into her mind,” Eloise began.

  “I’ve been there. I can return.”

  “Get in and confuse her.”

  Ariannas sighed. “And what the hell does that mean? How do I do that?”

  “I’ll guide you.”

  “Amateurs,” the watcher scoffed.

  They both turned in her direction, Ariannas glaring. Time to prove this one wrong. A few steps later, she stood in front of Opseth. “I killed your employer. You can forget your last paycheck.” And still the woman refused to react, not even to her new Empir’s use of an unfamiliar term.

  Ariannas snorted and reached a hand to Opseth’s face, placing her palm and fingers on the woman’s cheek. “Eloise, put your hand on mine.”

  Eloise stepped up beside her, and after placing one hand on Ariannas’ shoulder, she cupped her other hand over Ariannas’ on Opseth’s cheek. “Do what you must.”

  Ariannas—not Lisen anymore—reached into the rogue’s mind. She met resistance at first, but Eloise opened the w
ay. Like a ship plowing through arctic ice, Eloise breached, layer by layer, the defenses Opseth had put up. Years’ worth of walls first ruptured, then crumbled under the hermit’s unfettered will. Ariannas had never experienced such strength, such power. It was as though Eloise had saved up all she had for this moment. Which, of course, she likely had.

  At the edge of perception, Ariannas heard Opseth whimper. Wall upon wall came crashing down, and yet they still didn’t approach her. She had prepared well for such an attack. Perhaps she’d feared the hermits at Solsta finding her out while she was still one of them, but she hadn’t anticipated this from the two doing it now.

  “Don’t…hurt…my family,” the rogue croaked. Neither Ariannas nor Eloise responded. Of course, they wouldn’t hurt her family. Unless her family were somehow involved. But Ariannas had sensed only one presence when this one had reached out to her.

  Like a knife plunged into her temple, a headache assailed the new Empir. Opseth had found her own opening, and Ariannas knew she must close the rift before continuing. She sensed Eloise’s mind inserting itself between the two forces, and Ariannas’ headache abated. She tightened her defenses, patched up the hole and urged Eloise to step aside. It was time to finish this.

  Ariannas conjured up a mind wind, a great blast of a mental tornado. She allowed it to touch down in the brain of this woman whose cyclonic machinations had ripped away so much from the minds of so many others. Where it made contact, the woman’s thoughts began circling up like so much debris, her entire existence imploding as the whirlwind had its way. What once had seemed solid, unmovable, broke into pieces and floated away like so much wreckage. Memories, skills, training—all fragments carried up and out by Ariannas’ wind.

  And when the sky cleared, all that were left were fragments of a life, indistinguishable from one another—a picture here, a beloved bauble there. Nothing coherent. Ariannas stood in the center of the mental destruction and could see Eloise off in the distance, in a place spared by the storm, and Eloise nodded at her.

  “It is done. Retreat slowly,” Eloise whispered in her ear from beside her in the cell.

  One last thing, Ariannas thought.

  She invited three images into her mind. First, an image she’d found impossible to forget. Solsta’s infirmary some three months ago. A woman writhing in pain. Empir Flandari—the mother Ariannas never knew.

  Then another. Solsta’s receiving yard. A loyal servant—betrayed by her own betrayal, dead on the ground.

  And finally, the Empir’s bedchamber. Ariannas’ brother, Ariel—a boy-man, driven by greed and abuse who’d paid this woman to destroy on his behalf—soaking in a pool of his own blood.

  She filled the rogue’s empty mind with these images of its handiwork, leaving her with nothing other than that.

  Remember, she ordered Opseth. And as she imprinted this on the rogue, she pressed it into Eloise as well.

  She felt Eloise’s hand pull away from hers, which still lay on Opseth’s cheek, and she felt the hermit’s other hand let go of her shoulder. She heard one footstep in retreat and allowed herself to disengage from the rogue. Then, she whirled on Eloise.

  “You will take her with you back to Solsta,” Ariannas ordered. “You and the others will guard her. She must never regain what we’ve taken, and she must never leave Solsta, ever.”

  “Yes, my Liege.”

  “As for you, Sooth, I never want to see you again. Because of you, my mother is dead. Because of you, my brother’s life ended prematurely. Because of you, I’ve committed acts no one should even witness, much less participate in. You will go and never return. No letters, no contact whatsoever. Do you understand?”

  Eloise nodded slowly. “I understood all along.”

  The rage in Ariannas’ soul erupted, and she pushed Eloise away with both hands. “You…you…bitch. This is what I mean. You knew it all, all of it, all along. You knew my mother would die. You knew the servant would die. You knew I’d need to break all the rules, so you sent me to Earth—as far away from the haven as you could get me—just as I was starting to feel committed to a hermit’s path. You knew Korin and I…. Well, you knew what we’d do out in the desert, and God only knows why that had to happen. You knew I’d have to kill my own brother. And you knew Korin would leave me behind when it was over. Damn you!” She paused before finding the last blow. “I bet you even knew Jozan would die.”

  “No, that’s the one thing I never saw,” the hermit replied softly.

  “Would it have changed anything?”

  “I can’t say. I don’t think so.”

  Ariannas looked at the watcher. The woman was barely conscious. “Let her sleep it off, and then go.” She turned to leave and was stomping out of the door when Eloise called out to her.

  “My Liege, what about Hermit Titus?”

  Ariannas stopped and turned back. “What about him?”

  “He’s down here, too.”

  Ariannas dismissed her with a brush of her hand. “Take him. Yet another one of your pawns.”

  “Aye, my Liege.”

  And before Eloise could say another word, Ariannas marched out of the cell. She had to find room for sleep sometime tonight, but first she would insist on a bath. The sand of the desert she’d left behind more than two weeks ago still grated on her.

  I am Ariannas Ilazer. Lisen doesn’t live here anymore.

  Within the hour, Ariannas laid her head back on the side of the giant tiled bath, amazed at her power to roust servants out of their beds in the middle of the night to heat up the water and attend to her needs for towels and the like.

  I’ve been here before.

  Blood and grime to wash off. A soul to be purged, though this time it was her soul alone and it was guilty as sin.

  I could just slip down under the water. It would look like I’d drowned in a bath larger than most pools on Earth.

  No.

  I’ve been here before. At the Tuanes, mad and channeling Little Alex. It lingered like vapor in her memory. Singing in the echoing room. She looked around and knew this room would echo, too, but the time for singing was over.

  Funny. She’d thought she’d feel better than this—heady with victory or some such. Not without its regrets, of course, but feeling something. She felt only numb. Not a feeling left in her. She’d murdered her brother. How could she feel numb about that? Yet…she did.

  She’d shooed away all the servants. She required quiet to make her peace with loneliness.

  I’ve been here before. Yet she felt as sane as the washing cloth in her hand, as the Ilazer green and gold tiles that made up the bath. She’d set out to regain that which had been decreed hers, and she’d succeeded. A touch of a lie in her explanation to the Council in the morning, and she’d be done with it. How easy it all would be.

  But what of Holder Zanlot?

  She dropped back in the water to allow her newly shorn hair to soak clean. Upon surfacing, she heard that small voice that she’d relied on tonight to guide her. What of her? She’ll fight, but she’ll never win.

  Ariannas Ilazer sat bathing, the grime and blood washed away. Tomorrow she would take on Lorain Zanlot.

  Lorain stood in the bedchamber of her quarters in the old palace, bewildered, empty, lost. Two servants had arrived this morning with her things from the Keep—her beautiful tunics fit for an Empir-Spouse and intended for use throughout this session of Council, her notes and styluses along with her special ink from her office, mementoes which she had no desire to plow through now. A lifetime shrunk into the tragedy of one useless night. She plopped down on the bed.

  “Damn him!” She pounded a fist into the mattress. “Damn her!” This time she shouted it loud enough she suspected others in the palace had heard. She didn’t care. Her life lay in ruins. What in the name of the Destroyer was she to do now?

  She needed to cry, but she couldn’t. She must never allow the hurt, the pain—the grief, dared she think it?—to slip through to the surface. She was a Zanlot, an
d Zanlots never cried. They found better ways to manifest hurt and anger. And there it was. Anger. The light to head towards, the motivator she required to carry on despite it all.

  She stood up, pulled off her nightshift and stared at the spreading pouch at her belly. This child deserved the life of an Heir to the Empir of Garla. And as long as the so-called new Empir remained childless, this child was all that was left to the silly little hermit. Lorain could play that, could play it like a game of castles and peasants. Lorain would seduce the girl with sparkling good will and a promise that she would give the girl total involvement in the life of her soon-to-come niece or nephew.

  She pulled out the tunic she had planned on wearing today before…before the unfortunate incident. Wine red, no hint of grey, intended to serve notice that mourning for Flandari had ended, and a new Empir reigned. Well, that much was true. But the color disgusted her. Too close to the color of blood, the blood that had run like a river from Ariel’s heart but a few hours ago.

  She sat down again, her soul suddenly naked. She had insisted on going into the room with the commander and that captain, but she didn’t know why. Perhaps she’d needed a way out of denial. Confronted with the reality, she’d expected to be able to accept his murder as fact, and yet, here she sat the next day, struggling. The fact that he’d been murdered by a damn hermit with powers nobody knew the extent of, that part she’d found easy to believe.

  She rose, and this time she chose an old tunic from her own closet. The new ones would have to be cleaned and pressed before she could wear them anyway as they’d arrived in a state of disarray. She chose a grey one, of which she had several. She had a duty to mourn and make her mourning conspicuous. She might not find a way immediately to make the girl pay for what she’d done, and she’d have to keep her plans to herself. But when had that ever stopped her? The scope of the girl’s power remained unknown, but her actions would not go unpunished. And, in the meantime, Lorain would observe her closely for signs of weakness. Once she found the snag in the girl’s cloth, she’d unravel it bit by bit.