The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,4

that. No children, no family. Where secondary attachments existed, blackmail and extortion also existed. Some men and women could accept threats to family as the consequence of their duty. Most, however, could not. In the end, if forced to endure it by that sense of duty, something in them broke.

Elluvian wondered what had broken Renzo—assuming that anything had.

He was dead. No answers would, therefore, be forthcoming, which was the second reason that Elluvian was angry. He could not gather that information in any efficient way; he must investigate as if he were a Hawk, which did not suit him in any fashion. Helmat was unlikely to seek the Hawks or their aid; the death was an internal matter.

Rosen’s injuries had all but ensured she would never hunt at the Emperor’s pleasure again; she was willing to work in the office and willing to train those who could. That left the ranks all but unmanned. Mellianne was, in Elluvian’s opinion, skilled but not yet fully come into the wisdom that might allow her to survive particularly difficult encounters. Jaren was the only functional Wolf because Helmat did not hunt.

The Wolflord never did.

This had not always been the case, but trial and error had made clear to Elluvian that the presence of the Wolflord in the office was a necessity. Hunts were, by their very nature, long and often complex affairs; it was not simply a matter of assigning a death and a “reasonable” completion time.

Mellianne was not yet ready, and even were she, she disliked Jaren. She disliked Elluvian as well, but he expected that; affection of any kind was barely part of her functionality at this point. She was, however, good at what she did, and it did not seem to change her markedly. If she hated or despised people as deeply as she sometimes professed, she could nonetheless do something about the worst of them. That was the lever that could be pushed: she was no longer helpless.

But her contempt for the helpless was a counterpressure that he had not fully been able to dislodge. Power, and the desire for power, were the province of the living. Even the beasts sought power and supremacy. The balance between feeling powerful and feeling powerless was a gray area. The path from powerless to powerful defined a mortal. Elluvian did not understand the inner workings of most such journeys.

His experience, much of it bitter, had taught him that it was the journey itself that created an Imperial Wolf. Those who stepped on the wrong path, traveled the wrong byway, ended up as a head on the desk of the Lord of Wolves. He had not lied; he found the presence of the head there distasteful. It was, in its entirety, an accusation of failure.

Jaren was older now; younger than Helmat, but older than Mellianne and Rosen. Rosen’s injuries, Rosen’s lack of suitability, were a fact of life. But she had been an excellent Wolf. The life expectancy of the Wolves was short. Her injuries had probably extended hers into the foreseeable future. She would be bound to a desk. Jaren would train her to take on the tasks of organization and reporting, and Jaren would probably return to the hunt.

This, too, was not to Elluvian’s liking. Jaren had once been his hawk. Helmat had been his merlin. Rosen had been his eagle. Hunting birds, all.

And perhaps because that was his personal metaphor, it was natural that they should fly, and natural that one or two, tasting the freedom of the sky and the imperative of that hunt, not return. Perhaps that was why the Emperor had called them Wolves and not birds of prey.

Elluvian could not understand why the name Hawks had been given to the division that was largely investigative; that would not have been his choice of name. Swords, though, he considered apt. It was, however, the tabard of the Hawks he now searched for as he walked through the streets of Elantra.

Ah, he thought. There.

CHAPTER TWO

An’Teela was a legend in the Barrani High Court. As with all such legends, gossip and myth had conspired to obscure fact. Elluvian could not transcribe every word he had heard about her unless he had a mortal month or more and an endless supply of both ink and paper. What he believed of what he had heard would be shorter.

He could, however, attest to the truth of one of the more scandalous rumors: An’Teela walked the streets of the mortal city wearing the