Prince of Attania, 2

“Damn it!” Daniel threw down the communicator he had been holding, watching it shatter into pieces on the stone floor of his office—Merrell’s office. His now. “I told them not to take matters into their own hands,” he muttered under his breath. Well, they were Ben’s problem now, and good luck to him with those two.

Ben had had to move the prisoner to another location for his own safety, which meant breaking open the walls of the cave which had held him. Impenetrable walls to all but Family. But Tommy had gone after his father’s killer as soon as he learned the truth. It was a wonder he hadn’t killed the Jadock man outright.

“John!” he bellowed, startling the young enforcer who’d been leaning against the outer door, pretending not to listen to his conversation with the Sons of Men chief. “Any word from the Prince yet?” Attan was supposed to be back several days ago.

“No, sir.” John’s eyes kept flicking to the broken communicator on the floor. The communicator which could have been used to contact Prince Attan, if it wasn’t smashed into a thousand pieces.

“Well, find out!” Daniel snapped. He couldn’t believe he had once coveted Merrell’s job. He sank down behind his desk and pushed a mound of paperwork aside so he could rest his head. Parrion wasn’t his only problem. Jet was encountering all sorts of resistance, mostly from Family who saw a weakness in Merrell’s abdication. Few knew the truth.

Jet was presently on the west coast of Attania dealing with the authorities in Tashkan. So far, Saffron, the largest city on the west coast, remained solidly on Jet’s side. Dozens of incidents of Family choosing to “release,” in imitation of what they believed was Merrell’s choice, continued to occur in every major city. It was as if Merrell’s passing triggered a wave of no confidence among Attania’s Family. Were they really so dissatisfied with their lives that they were willing to accept dissolution as an alternative? Daniel, like Jet himself, had a hard time understanding it.

Daniel was in the process of reorganizing the enforcers, and some of them, most notably his cousin Tommy Merrell, and especially his little brother Charles, had a hard time recognizing Daniel’s authority. That wasn’t the worst of it.

The door to his office eased open. “Daniel? Are you ready?”

The soft, low voice cut through him, even though he was expecting it. Sephira, former Queen and lately Merrell’s lover, stepped into the room. Granted, she had been living here at Arden with Merrell since Lorra had become Queen in Darcy, but did she really expect him to escort her to lunch every day?

She did. Daniel got it—he was the senior Family in terms of power here at Arden. He even had the title she had enjoyed with Merrell—the Enforcer. The truth was, Daniel had always had a crush on the former Queen. She had a timeless beauty, for all that she was mother to his step-brother Charles. She had been very young when she married King Roy, and much younger than Roy’s brother Thomas Merrell when they started living together. Daniel had really thought Sephira and Merrell had loved each other, and perhaps they had, as much as Family could ever feel that emotion. But Merrell was gone, and Daniel was here, and Sephira was—Sephira.

“Come on,” he said, standing and offering Sephira his arm. They sat at the raised table in the communal dining room, the object of not a few sidelong glances from curious students. Daniel’s own enforcers knew better than to look curious. After lunch, he escorted Sephira to her rooms in the main part of the house, and stayed with her for the rest of the afternoon.

John’s hesitant knock on Sephira’s door roused Daniel from his well-deserved nap. He opened the door, rakng his fingers though the tousled hair on his head. He hadn’t adopted Jet’s multiple braids, but his hair was longer than it had ever been when he had been a Prince. “What?” he growled.

“Attan is back, sir,” John replied. “He’s waiting for you downstairs in your office.”

“It’s about time.” Daniel immediately dissolved into wind and flowed through the passageways of Arden to the enforcer’s quarters below. It was only a matter of time before Sephira got dressed and followed him down to find out what was going on, and he realized he was going to have to set some boundaries very soon. He wondered briefly how Merrell would have handled that.

Attan waited by the window overlooking Arden’s expansive back lawn which sloped down to the the woods which lay between there and Darcy proper. He wore his enforcer’s uniform and his hair was cut regulation short. As soon as he felt Daniel’s presence, he let go of his own physical body and merged with his uncle. He missed merging—it was different than with pure elementals, because Family Elementals, those Family who had learned to let go of their physical selves at will, remained aware even while in the elemental state. As his father Jet maintained, the best of both worlds. Attan had his own reservations, but sometimes, like now, the merge was better for communicating concepts as well as feelings.

Attan was better at hiding some of those concepts, so he filled Daniel in on what he’d learned at Midver without ever bringing up the unnamed village near the sea. Even so, it felt good to share on such a deep level. He came out of the merge grinning. “Sephira? Really?”

Daniel’s answering smile flickered, before he dismissed his relationship with his former step-mother as incidental. “You were supposed to be back two days ago,” he said. “Why weren’t you in contact sooner?”

Attan’s cheeks reddened. “I—uh—forgot my communicator,” he said. True enough, and embarrassing when he realized it after he returned to Midver. “I didn’t think I’d be gone for more than a day or two.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” Daniel said. Attan blinked. Was this the same Daniel who had winked at him about being in the enforcers together? He nodded, and straightened his shoulders. “Yes, sir.”

Daniel rolled his eyes where Attan couldn’t see. “Tell me again about Midver.”

Attan had been disappointed that Jet was not at Arden, but he understood the reasons why he wasn’t. Daniel had indicated in the merge that they would be going to Tashkan to meet Jet, that they would have already been on their way if Attan had returned on time. So he gave his report to Daniel instead, in words this time instead of bursts of information. He glossed over his time at Elea’s village. “My father asked me to check if the caves under Midver showed any of the same colored markings only Family can see in the caves under Parrion. He also asked me to interview Emma Jadock, Tom Jadock’s mother, to see if the Enforcer, Merrell, I mean, had said anything else to her to explain what happened between him and her son.”

Midver’s elementals had met Attan on his return from Elea’s village, and brought him to Emma in the tiny chapel. Rather than working on her carvings downstairs in the workshop below the chapel, Emma had waited for him on one of the benches, surrounded as always by multi-colored—to Attan’s eyes—free elementals. He joined their ranks, swirling in wreaths of fire around Emma’s frail body. Her eyes unerringly followed him. To talk in human form, he took back his body and sat on a bench across from her. Except for the elementals, he and Emma were the only two in the chapel.

“I told her Merrell was dead,” Attan said, remembering the moment. He wasn’t sure, even now, that Emma truly understood what he’d told her. She’d blinked away a tear or two, but then smiled and said she would miss him. “I asked her what Merrell had told her about her son Tom, and she began to get agitated when I mentioned Tom, so I stopped. I asked her if she knew about the colored bands along the cave walls and she said yes. That was how she chose the stone for her carvings, based on their colors. So I still don’t know if she understood me or not.”

“She’s blind, isn’t she?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, but that doesn’t seem to stop her from seeing.” Attan paused. “She sees me.”

“What do you mean, she sees you?”

“I man, when I’m in elemental form, she knows exactly where I am.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows. Jet hadn’t really believed it, either. “You mean she thinks she does.”

“No, she really sees me.” Attan smiled. He took a deep breath. This is why he’d lingered in Midver for another two days. He’d gone to work with Emma in her workshop below the chapel, taking up carving again. She’d sent him to the tapped out caverns in Midver’s bowl to bring her back specific colors of stone—their conversation about the colors must have triggered something in her memory. Attan had gone further afield, into the natural caves beyond, through openings too crushed or small for ordinary humans, and sliced out pieces from the colored bands he found there. They pulsed with energy from the free elementals which comprised them, though it didn’t seem to hurt the elementals any when Attan separated them from the wall. Other elemental surged to fill in the space. This was the same yet different from when Attan had infused the statues he’d carved for his mother and father—in those, Attan had placed free elementals inside the finished product, and had even inserted himself into one of them at one point. In these, the free elementals were already present in the raw stone, and, as Emma had said, that’s what gave the stone its unique colors. Attan wondered how many of those famous pieces Emma had carved and which had been sold all over Attania contained the living essences of free elementals. They chose to remain in her carvings; they could have left at any time. Was this because they had reached that point of awareness that Tark had been talking about?

Attan prudently didn’t mention his speculations to Daniel. He did, however, mention the sea.

“The colore bands of elementals run along the cave walls from Midver south,” Attan told his uncle, without mentioning precisely where they came out. “I followed them to the southern sea. It wasn’t as close to the sea as in the caves in Parrion, but just like in Parrion, the free elementals headed straight out to the sea.” With a little help from Elea and the women of her village. Attan left out that part. The truth was what mattered; the colored bands of elementals headed for the sea.

“And then what happened?” Daniel had investigated the Eastern Sea after Attan had reported the surging elementals there had traveled en masse out to sea and it was as if they had hit an invisible wall—ironic, since they themselves were no longer invisible—and were repulsed. They had swarmed back into the caves, according to Attan.

Attan shrugged. Here’s where the two reports diverged. In the southern sea, the elementals hadn’t come back. Attan told Daniel that, without adding that Elea had sung the elementals home again. “They just disappeared this time,” he said.

Daniel’s brow creased. “This is too coincidental. There’s nothing out there that we know of. But I think it merits another look. I’m going to talk to the King about sending ships out form each Sea. If we place Family Elementals on these ships, maybe they’ll be able to sense if there’s anything at all out there.”

“Maybe.” Attan thought it was a good idea, too. In fact, he wanted to be one of the ones to go. He opened his mouth to suggest it, when an imperious knock sounded on the office door.

“At least she knocked this time,” muttered Daniel. He got up to open the door. “Sephira.” He smiled widely. “Did you miss me already?”

Sephira peeked around Daniel to see who was in his office, and her face hardened for just a split second when she spied Attan. “Prince,” she said, with a minimum of politeness.

Daniel asked, without opening the door any wider, “Do you need something, Sephira?”

The former Queen pouted. “I was hoping for news of Charles,” she replied. “Have you heard where he will be posted? The King promised . . .” She fell silent as Daniel’s scowl finally registered.

“Charles Wyling is an enforcer under my direct command,” Daniel said. “As is Attan Estee.” He glanced at Attan, as if daring him to contradict that statement. “I will decide their placement. Now, if you will excuse us, Attan and I must leave. I’ll see you when I get back.” Giving Sephira a brief, cool smile, Daniel turned away and yelled “John!” When the enforcer popped into view, obviously not having been very far away, he added, “Please escort Ms. Wyling back to her rooms.”

As soon as the door closed behind Sephira and John, Daniel leaned against it and wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. “Glad that’s over,” he said.

Attan asked, “Aren’t you worried she’ll be angry with you?”

Daniel laughed. “Oh, I’m sure she will. And we’ll have a grand time making up.”

They waited long enough for an official escort, and then started the motorcade across Attania. Where Jet had gone before them, as much to be seen as to see, Daniel the Enforcer and Prince Attan the heir followed. Daniel seldom wore his easy smile, and Attan remained the perfect enforcer. Which put the people’s mind at ease. Attania was in good hands, and the young Prince, powerful but son of a common Family woman, was obviously being groomed as the Enforcer’s successor.

It helped when the official announcement came, halfway through their tour, that the Queen in Wister was going to have a child. Surely, a royal child with powerful blood on both sides, would become the next ruler of Attania.

Attan, for one, was glad.