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“If it is one of your family, my alran,” Indaturan said. “All the evidence is circumstantial.”

“I know,” Adrian said. “But we do need to check them and I could do with checking that none of them are still secretly intending to hunt resonants. Some of them flipped a bit too easily. I mean, I know they’re scared of Julie, but…”

“It does all seem a little too easy, doesn’t it?” Julie agreed. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. I think most of them are loyal but at least some were too deeply committed to have given up that easily.” She looked over at Daniel and Ebona. “Would you help us out with this?”

Daniel and Ebona looked at each other for a long moment before Ebona replied.

“Of course,” she said. “Let’s get this sorted out before any traitors have chance to make a move.”

“Thank you,” Julie inclined her head. “And I hate to say this, but let’s hope Aneira’s spy is among our kin because otherwise we have no idea where they are and we need to question them to find out more about this incursion she’s planning.”

“We do,” Alaryia said. “Because Aneira has a large enough court to cause a great deal of trouble for you.”

“You know we could probably distract her,” Estara said. “She’s not going to attack Taloa if we’re needling her flanks.” She paused as Indaturan shook his head. “You think she still would?”

“I don’t know,” he said “But I know you overestimate the chance that she wouldn’t. No one knows what her interest in Taloa is – she doesn’t even tell her own court what she’s up to – so there’s no way to know if she will value her territory more than whatever it is.”

“That’s a fair point,” Estara said. “But it’s worth a try, isn’t it? At the very least we might peel some of her people away from her.”

“It is worth a try.” Alaryia agreed. “But we’d have to make her people more scared to stay with her than they are to leave and given how cowed they are, that’s not going to prove easy.”

“What about hitting it from two angles?” Matthias asked. “On the one hand, make staying with her more difficult and on the other hand, make sure that they know they have somewhere safe from her to flee.”

“I like the way you think,” Indaturan said. “Half Aneira’s court would flee if they thought they could get away.”

“Not just safe from her but notably better,” Estara said. “I don’t like the idea of just making her the worse option when she’s already so bad.”

“I think we can do that,” Alaryia said. “The challenge is in making ourselves look safer than her, not better.” She looked over at Savira. “I suppose we have to thank you for bringing this to our attention, but you could have found a better way of doing it.”

“And there is one other thing to discuss,” Darlrydan said. “What in the world did you do to yourself and Kalliss? And why?”

“Desperation,” Savira said. “It was a couple of decades ago. Mitakrian kept needling the territory I claimed at the time for some reason and he nearly killed me a couple of times when I tried to stop him.” She shook her head. “He seemed to be trying to steal my research and he was certainly distracting me. I thought that if I could somehow remove my Life vulnerability it would give me an edge.. It didn’t, which is why we fled and were transient for so long. The Earth affinity was a nice side-effect but I really didn’t expect the Wind thing thing. I probably should have.”

—

A/N: Haventon book one (not two as I typed for some reason. I’m still writing that) is finally back from the editor, so I’m looking for some volunteers to read through the edited manuscript and give me final feedback before I release it as a book. If you’d like to volunteer pop me a comment on this installment and I’ll send you the manuscript.

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