Fractured Loyalties by Pam Uphoff

Author:Pam Uphoff [Uphoff, Pam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939746399
Publisher: Iron Ax Press
Published: 2018-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

The dining room quieted down and Flare shooed them out of her kitchen.

"Oh! I didn't hear you come in. As if I ever did." Nighthawk grabbed Ra'd's hand and pulled him across the room. "Ra'd, this is my other grandfather, Wolfgang Oldham."

Very tall, taller than Wolfson. Broad and muscular. The God of War looked like a fit fighter of middle years, short brown hair and beard shot through with silver. He had Nighthawk's eyes, or vice versa. So dark they were nearly black, with a rim of warm red-brown. And the nose. That confident elegant arrogant arch.

"Ra'd ibn Nicholas."

Like Wolfson, the man was completely shielded. Impossible to read.

"Indeed." A flash of teeth. "You have his stare."

Ra'd blinked at a sudden memory of his father's stare. Reputed to reduce the toughest warrior into a contrite puppy. Blinked away sudden moisture in his eyes. "Thank you, sir."

A laugh from behind him. Harry stepped out from behind his bar. "Trust you to remember that, Wolf. So how many are coming tonight."

"Not sure if Dydit's going to make it. Jason, Nil, and Michael are all on the way."

A conference of the gods?

No. A poker game.

Four gods and two wizards.

Ra'd kicked back in a corner and listened to them. Together, their accents, their dialects slowly shifted until they were the "pure" speech the Prophets had used. He could nearly close his eyes and mistake those four for Prophets. Patrick's voice had had that deep rumble to it. Diego had had that sharp edge of laughter. Jason Rombeau's velvety baritone was a lot like Shota's.

The table chatter was similar, the game variations and rules identical. Well, perhaps poker was common here.

Wolfson slipped in around midnight.

Peter pounced, and hauled him to the next table. "Is it really a good idea to let him come here?"

Wolfson's teeth flashed. "Yes. There are only three ways to deal with the Empire. This teetery neutrality we have right now, war, or friendship. They have a population of eight billion to our half billion maybe. They have nearly twice as many magically talented people as we have humans. They have, best guess, twenty million who are strong enough and well enough trained in the basics to be dangerous with just a bit more training."

"Crap."

"Yes. So," Wolfson tilted his head toward Ra'd. "I take every opportunity to encourage people to like us . . . in the hope that they will do whatever they can to foster peace. Give Ra'd another fifty years and he'll be influential. We send all the half Oners who grew up here, off to serve on Embassy—Ruff Hasty for instance—and I'd love to get more of your sisters over there."

Michaelson choked.

"Vulpinite and Tern work in our embassy." Wolfson shrugged. "Anything we can do to change the Oner's perceptions of us to friends or distant cousins. Not enemies."

Michaelson sat back and crossed his arms. "Oh? Are we going to become an exotic vacation destination?"

Wolfson laughed at that. And fetched a pack of cards.

Nighthawk and Flare proved to be deadly

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