Deres closed his eyes, trying very hard to focus on the pleasurable feelings Neral's strong, delicate fingers were trying to provide as they caressed and kneaded his broad shoulders. Her fingertips followed the edges of the muscle while she would occasionally bring her hands together as if in prayer to run them with some pressure up his spine before spreading them outward over his shoulders almost like a blooming flower. Despite the fact that there was an admittedly somewhat crazy desire to hold onto his anxiety, she was helping.
He was sitting on the edge of the custom bed, large enough for three with room to spare with her long legs wrapped around his lap, as he felt as though he were on a cloud with the down comforter beneath them. He was home alone with the woman that he adored and that alone prompted him to take a deep breath and let the confession. "I feel so helpless."
"For now, you are doing all you can do."
"Which is nothing." His dejection was palpable.
She was sympathetic, but she, as always, was pragmatic. "Sometimes that's all you can do. It's painful and frustrating, but it is what it is. There are times where your enemies
want
you to rampage. Act on emotion and your enemies will make you pay for it. Sometimes you attack. Sometimes you wait. Sometimes you simply make another move to see what your enemy does because it gives you a better look into their minds and how they work so that when you finally do act your odds of victory are much improved. Much of my career has been spent in waiting and even more of it has been spent
not
doing what I
want
to do."
Her fingertips dimpled his neck, pressing softly as they moved. "I'm waiting for a name of the mages responsible. I'm waiting for the case against him to be presented to court. Once those things happen, I will be able to do what I want to do." Deres couldn't see the grin that found its way to her.
"Which is?"
"Come after all of them like the righteous hand of the Goddess...without all that mercy nonsense." In due time they would all pay.
He snorted with laughter and shook his head. "I like the sound of that."
Deres tried to find some solace in that. "The case will be ready at least." The ledgers were in code, but with his and Bryana's skills the code wasn't particularly difficult to break. Beyond that flurry of activity for him, there was little else to be done. The case could be presented almost at will. They wanted to give Kav enough time to produce every single piece of evidence possible. Then it would take time for court to go through it all, but, in the end, there was no way the queen wouldn't be able to unify them behind her. Then there would be more time taken for the logistics to be put in place to end his business presence in Erette.
That left the mages. It was unfortunate, but not at all unexpected that there was no straight line to be drawn from Strannix to them within the guild records.
"I just don't feel like I'm doing what I should be doing."
"Which is?"
"Looking for the mages myself, or at least helping in that."
"Do you think Bryana isn't doing all she can? Is she missing something in your mind?"
He huffed in annoyance and rose from the bed, physically feeling Neral's absence. "The only fault I can find is that what she has to work with and trust the other guilds. They don't exactly have our best interests at heart. They have no stake in this...that we can see anyway."
"Based on what they've given her, they have provided her with at least a few possibilities. They seem to be acting in good faith."
"I know," he agreed, conceding the point. "What was used to take Private Hoben is something of a unique specialty. But, at the end of the day, we have to trust that they don't have their own agendas. Perhaps some of them are paid to keep those responsible ahead of us."
"Or it could be a trap for Bryana; a contingency in the event that the original plan failed." Sometimes she didn't like the way her strategic mind worked. "Since the guilds seem much like the Houses, it's a possibility."
His mind picked up a thread almost without realizing it at first, then picked up few others and tying them together with admittedly little more than intuition. "Maybe the ledgers aren't useless when it comes to her. He passed on a lot of work to the mage guilds through one of his dens here in the city. Who says that he just used it for the guilds? Maybe that was a...hub of mage activity of all kinds. Maybe the name that passed on the money knows them and knows how to find them"
"Many 'maybes' to be had there."
"Yes, Neral, but I like the sound of it."
"And you'd be doing something."
In his mind, he was already planning what to do and how to get what he needed. Appealing to this person's conscience was probably pointless because one couldn't work for a man like that, and in that capacity and have one. Either they never had one or they killed it to keep access to the money and the power their master had. Money? He didn't care about money and he knew Neral didn't either. They could make him rich in his own right. But that put him in the same position as Bryana with the mages. He had to trust him or her to tell the truth and not be acting according to some plan that Deres wasn't aware of. There was really only one option to make sure he got the truth and he got all of it; this one would have to be corrupted, too. Only by owning him or her would he know all there was to know.
"You don't think you're the one going in, do you?"
The sound of her voice was sudden in his ear, temporarily pulling him back to the now. "Why not?"
