Intrigues by Sharon Green

said in a growl as he looked down from the wreck of the ceiling. “And please don’t anyone suggest it was nothin’ but an accident.”
    “Of course it wasn’t an accident,” Lorand put in with a sound of ridicule, his own gaze still on the gaping hole above them. “The smoothness of most of the edges around that opening tells me that the marble was cut through, possibly from above, except for the four corners of the section. Those were probably knocked out with sledges, definitely from above, all of them at the same time. My guess is that our friend Ayl is at it again.”
    “But how did his people get in without being caught?” Tamrissa demanded, now looking highly incensed. “I thought all new staff additions were being carefully checked.”
    “There’s a chance they got in as temporary workers,” Jovvi said, her expression thoughtful. “That’s the way I would do it if temporary workers – and visitors – aren’t being looked at as carefully.”
    “So the members of Ayl’s group that we caught were a diversion,” Tamrissa said, glancing at Vallant. “Vallant said they might be, and now we know what they were diverting us from. But it must have taken them a long time to cut through marble with hand tools.”
    “What choice did they have?” Vallant countered, his mood obviously continuing dark. “They don’t have talents to reach us with, so they’re usin’ whatever else they can.”
    “And they obviously don’t care about innocent lives,” Lorand said with his own growl while looking around at the members of the orchestra. “Those people would have been killed right along with us, but there’s something else to consider. How did Ayl know we’d be standing here?”
    “I think that’s fairly obvious,” Naran said when no one else volunteered an answer. “Since I know for a fact that the man Ayl doesn’t share my talent, he must still have supporters working with Dom Mohr. If Dom Mohr decided in advance to use this orchestra platform and mentioned his intention aloud, that’s all they would have needed.”
    “But this is hardly all that’s in store for us,” Rion put in, his air of thoughtfulness tinged with annoyance. “I would suspect that we were being tested again by Dom Ardanis and his fellow Sight magic users, but saving the members of the orchestra as well as ourselves is too minor a matter. I suggest, though, that if we survive whatever else occurs, that we have a word with Dom Ardanis about having too much faith in our ability. This could easily have turned out worse than it did.”
    “I agree,” Jovvi said as everyone else showed his or her own agreement. “We may have been successful, but in my opinion that’s cutting it much too close. But right now we’d better see what we can do about the chaos in here. Lorand, will you please do me the favor of lending your voice to begin with?”
    Lorand agreed to the request without hesitation, but as Jovvi turned toward their audience again Naran couldn’t help fretting. If this unexpected attack wasn’t what her people had been trying to keep them from knowing about, what in the world could they be hiding…?
     
    “All right, let’s settle down now,” Lorand shouted, giving Jovvi the help of a louder voice that she’d asked for. “The danger should be completely over now, but we’ll still make sure. Please stand where you are and don’t try to distract those who are doing the investigating.”
    A mild babble came in answer, but Lorand ignored it to look around for some of their secondary Blendings. A number of the Blending members were standing together toward the back of the room on the right, but those people were obviously surrounding the members of two Blendings already seated on the floor. Two Blending entities were investigating the matter then, and without having had to be asked.
    “This has to prove we’re doing it right,” Lorand said to a waiting Jovvi, his smile sincere. “Two of our lesser Blendings