The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,3

do not believe she will be engaged in ground hunts in the near—or far—future.”

Helmat did not curse; he seldom did when Elluvian’s appraisal matched his own. “We’re down a Wolf.” Renzo was clearly no longer considered a Wolf.

They were down two, but Elluvian did not correct Helmat. In his current mood it would be highly unprofitable.

“Who do you have for me?”

Elluvian had, three times in the past centuries, attempted to change the recruitment procedures of the Wolves. He had failed each of those times. Elluvian did not technically or legally command the Wolves, but he found them. Scouted them. Often trained them. Helmat Marlin, current Lord of Wolves, had final say; not all of those Elluvian brought into the office had been accepted into the pack.

But all of them had had, in Elluvian’s opinion, the raw ability to become Wolves and to survive it.

“One possible candidate.”

“Bring them in.”

* * *

This was, of course, easier said than done. Helmat was a Wolf of several decades; he understood what possible meant in this context.

Elluvian did not generally seek Wolves from the comfortable strata of human society. There were always exceptions; the current Wolflord had come from an older—for mortals—family, and his father was what passed for nobility. Had Elluvian been aware of his family and parentage when he had first approached the younger Helmat, he would never have offered him the job. And that would have been a mistake. He could see that clearly now—but decades had passed, and he had seen Helmat’s full measure in the interim.

The Emperor wanted soldiers.

The Wolves, however, were not soldiers. The Emperor’s nomenclature preference aside, the Wolves in general were considered assassins by much of the populace.

In the view of the Barrani, the differences between the two, soldier and assassin, were slight and would be considered negligible. One killed on command. The other also killed on command. The difference would be in the small details: the soldiers congregated; the assassins did not. Where an army might be met with the forces of another army, the assassin was free to come and go as competence and strategic planning allowed.

Mortals seldom considered the two to be the same. Helmat, in spite of his experience and knowledge, did not. But Helmat appeared to understand what the Emperor desired of the Wolves—an understanding that continued to elude Elluvian.

The bare bones of it, however, were clear.

Find someone who might be molded into a soldier who could—and did—kill on command. Ah, no, not soldier—executioner. The Eternal Emperor had those: men who saw that death sentences were carried out, both cleanly and quickly. The Emperor did not call the Wolves his assassins; he called them his executioners. His mobile executioners.

There was no shortage of mortals who could, and did, kill. No shortage of Barrani who could, and did, either. But the Emperor had decided, for reasons that made sense to none of the Immortals of Elluvian’s acquaintance, that the general formation of the power structure that Immortals understood was not allowed to occur within his Empire naturally.

In the Emperor’s Empire, power was not to be the sole measure of worth. There was right, there was wrong, and laws laid out which action belonged in which category. They seemed arbitrary to Elluvian, an echo of the systems around which the Dragons and the Barrani built their societies. Right and wrong simply meant: angers the Emperor or does not anger the Emperor—the person in power.

The Emperor, however, denied that this was the intent.

* * *

Elluvian was angry. He had felt low-level irritation—a mixture of resignation and anger—since he had entered the Imperial presence; it had grown steadily as he had reached the offices the Wolves occupied in the Halls of Law.

To see the head of Renzo displayed on the desk of the Wolflord had been something of a surprise, and not a pleasant one. Displaying the dead was not something the Barrani themselves were above—but in general, the display was more tasteful, less immediately raw. There were better ways to make a point.

Renzo’s failure was not unexpected. If Helmat was Wolflord, he was not an open book; he could be both jovial and deadly as the occasion demanded, and his ability to deal with emotional fragility was almost nonexistent. No, what frustrated Elluvian was Renzo’s decision. Observed pragmatically, Renzo had nothing at all to gain by Helmat’s death. He would not become Wolflord.

Those who served as Wolves required two things: loyalty to the Emperor and his Wolves, and a complete lack of attachments outside of