There are some chapters that were cut from the books; sometime for brevity, sometimes because they were from the perspective of someone other than the main protagonist (or protagonists, in the case of World Gate). This was one of them, a snippet to give a little more backstory on Delia, the Golem, and her relationship with Teinhaj, the commander, in World Gate. I thought it was interesting, but it didn’t flow with the rest of the story. So, here it is for your reading pleasure.
Teinhaj Kaysareeth was in a dour mood. He was bucking for a promotion and that meant you needed two things: know the right people and don’t pet the mudrake. He was working rather successfully on the first part and had thus far been either lucky or talented… he went back and forth sometimes on which… for the second. That was, until now. In twenty years of service, he’d never had anything turn on him like this. His latest op was so far south of the border he was expecting glacier sightings. And it was all because of the two people–using the term ‘people’ a bit loosely–in front of him.
He leaned back in his rather utilitarian wooden chair and threw his feet up on his equally utilitarian desk with his hands crossed behind the back of his balding head, looking relaxed, something that told anyone that knew him that he was angry and trying to keep his temper under control. The coat of arms with crossed oar and spyglass was framed behind him, a subtle reminder of the organization they worked for. Kethem Naval Intelligence, or KNI, was the newest branch of Kethem’s military. While it had started as a branch of the Kethem Navy, it was independent now, independent and, in many ways, more powerful than the service that had spawned it. From its early days as an organization dedicated to using precog and detection spells to assist in naval battles, it had changed over time to be a central point for gathering, synthesizing, and reporting on any activity that might affect the security of Kethem. While the director theoretically reported into Kethem’s Naval Strategic Command, they were appointed by the HIgh Council, and much of the information that flowed from the KNI to the High Council was classified at a level that the heads of the Kethem Navy did not have access too.
Delia and Corel were on the other side of Teinhaj’s utilitarian desk, sitting on even more utilitarian chairs with square, straight backs, chairs Teinhaj had picked out personally because they were uncomfortable. If he was meeting people he wanted to impress, he used the conference room, with its dark polished wood table and padded armchairs. When he meet with his staff, he wanted them squirming. Not that Delia cared, being who and what she was, and Corel… Corel was a master of projecting an image. Nothing broke through that. She looked almost grandmotherly, certainly old enough to be Delia’s mother, but looks were more deceiving than usual in this case. Delia was older than Corel by a wide margin. Centuries. Neither of the two would lose their composure from simple tricks like uncomfortable chairs.
Delia was dressed in a tight-fitting black leather dress, looking about as different as possible from the quiet acolyte who had worn ornamental robes in the Hasamelis temple. The subservient, blue-eyed innocence was gone as well. Now, she looked casually lethal and her blue eyes sparkled with faint amusement the source of which was not clear to Teinhaj, given current circumstances. He needed to change that. The straight backed chair might not intimidate her, but there were other ways to fluster people. He looked her up and down slowly. “Nice outfit. Sexy. So, out of curiosity, you think you were made for …” and he paused and raised his eyebrows suggestively. Something he could never have done with any of the other staff, but then, they were human.
Delia’s grin froze for a second, then she smiled a bit wider, leaned over his desk, and said huskily “I wouldn’t know, Commander, but if you want we can find a room with a bed and experiment. It could be the happiest minute of your entire life. Possibly the last minute, too, but I’ll try not to damage you that much if I can help it.”
Teinhaj’s frown hardened. Delia was always hard to intimidate, mostly because she rarely reacted the way you’d expect. Also because, for reasons he didn’t fully comprehend, she could get under his skin in a way no one else in the organization could. But she should know better than to toy with him. Time for a different, more direct approach. “You want to tell me again why you attacked a sixth dan Hasamelis priest when we spent half a year placing you in that temple?” They had already had that conversation but it was still baffling to him. Delia was a valuable asset to the organization, being immune to most detection spells, telepathy, empathy, and other tricks used to screen people. A total chameleon. Not to mention her physical capabilities. Six months of her time was a precious commodity.
Delia sat back and shrugged. “The goal was to find out who — if anyone — is trying to infiltrate the Hasamelis religious order and why.”
Teinhaj said, “Someone, or something, is. You know that came from an indisputable source.” A source Teinhaj only knew about as a codename, GOLDEN GATE. A source that was infuriatingly specific and too pointed at times, which made interpreting its information like trying to see a beach based on a single grain of sand. But it had also always been accurate.
Delia waved her hand to mollify him. “Yes, yes. The point is that after six months I had nothing. Even this mission to retrieve the Staff of Hasamelis that you said was related, somehow, appeared to be just what it was; a mission to Tawhiem. So after six months, the first clue about anything was Jedia knowing the mission was a hoax. We didn’t tell him, so someone else must have, someone that may know more than we do. So I wanted to find out who.”
“And to do that you had to splinter his shoulder bones?”
Delia sighed. “You know how sneaky those priest are. I had to keep him from casting spells or he would have popped someplace else. So I had to inflict a little pain. He isn’t a Holder, so there are no legal issues with using force to extract information. And really, a few healing spells and a few weeks of pain blocking spells and he’ll be fine. It wasn’t like he was going to die or something.”
Teinhaj wasn’t so sure about that. Jedia was pretty old, and the shock of having your bones crushed wasn’t trivial, but he let that go. “And you got nothing out of it.” Delia nodded. The old codger had been tougher than she had given him credit for and he had teleported out before she could get him to talk. “So, you blew your cover for nothing,” continued Teinhaj.
Delia said in sudden exasperation “I made a judgment call, well within mission parameters.”
Teinhaj stood and looked at her coldly. “Well, then, time to change those, I think. Pop it.”
Delia’s eyes widened and the amusement went away, replaced by doubt and concern. She laughed in disbelief and said, “You’re kidding. I’ll lose everything.”
Teinhaj shrugged. “Which, like you said, is nothing valuable. Pop it,” he said again.
The doubt in Delia’s eyes morphed to fear; her jaw muscles tensed and her teeth ground together audibly. Corel spoke up for the first time. “Teinhaj, dear, I don’t think that’s called for.” Corel didn’t like Delia; too much of a loose cannon in her book. But they were both on the same team, and that meant watching each other’s backs.
“That’s Commander, Lieutenant,” said Teinhaj to Corel harshly. He turned back to Delia. “Pop it,” he said for the third time. There was a grinding noise, the noise of machinery that had not been properly oiled creaking into motion, and Delia’s mouth started to open. Her eyes held panic now.
“Please,” she said, words slightly garbled through frozen teeth, as her mouth continued to open slowly. “Please.”
Teinhaj waited a moment, then said “order rescinded.”
Delia’s mouth closed with a snap. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “Thank you,” she said, but there was more hate in her eyes that gratitude. It didn’t matter. She was bound by the three laws. She could hate all she wanted but it would never result in any action against him or the organization.
Except he suddenly realized it did matter; he felt like he’d stepped over a line he hadn’t meant to cross, and had done it out of anger. Teinhaj almost apologized before he could get himself under control, but the awkward pause was probably more telling than an apology would have been.
Trying to regain control of the situation — he was supposed to be chastising these two — he turned to Corel. “And you. You abandoned the mission in Tawhiem. Want to tell me again exactly why?” Corel had already given a shortened version of the events just before Padan had teleported her to the Hasamelis temple; they were together because Corel had shown up unexpectedly an hour ago. She was still in the travel-stained clothes she had been wearing in Tawhiem.
Corel shrugged and said, “To avoid certain death?” Before Teinhaj could rain verbal blows down on her, she added, “And I did bring back that elvish crystal ball, the evowna. Oh, and please, don’t forget, when the artifact boys are done with it, I need to deliver it to the elvish ambassador to Bythe.” She said it with total conviction, clearly meaning it, and Teinhaj almost laughed for the first time since the start of the conversation. An elvish evowna alone was something the analysis team would work on for a year. This one was encrypted with some secret an elf was willing to die for. It was going to be more like a decade. Or it would be, as long as the elves didn’t realize it was missing. They had some method of remotely destroying the things. But thinking that it would end up back in the elves’ hands, that was Corel; she could fool the most sophisticated detect truth spell by fooling herself.
The evowna would be a silver lining to the dark cloud of this op, but he didn’t need to acknowledge that. “Yes, you brought back something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the mission. Brilliant. And this certain death… you saw black things and a floating guy, and that’s certain death? Not sounding so certain to me, outfitted the way you were.”
“The elf thought so,” said Corel, lips pursed.
That stopped Teinhaj for a moment. You couldn’t argue with it, given the elves’ gear was substantially better than anything they could field. He conceded the point and continued, “But you’re sure that it wasn’t whatever was trying to lure a Hasamelis priest out there? That whatever was trying to do that was in the cave? And everyone was heading there?” Corel nodded. “Well, I received word that Padan teleported into the Temple just after you did, so I doubt he knows much more than you. Which means we have to focus on this group you were with; if they went in, they may have seen something, heard something. Tell me about them.”
Corel went down the list. She had a good memory for detail. When she hit the Stangri’s name Delia broke in. “His name was Gyeong?”
Corel nodded.
“You know him?” asked Teinhaj. Delia nodded this time. “How?” asked Teinhaj.
Delia looked almost embarrassed. “Sometimes I join the Mautua fights on the harbor front.”
Teinhaj blinked. “Mautua?” Amazement was written across his face. “You?” Delia nodded again. Once in awhile, she just wanted to … well, she wasn’t sure what she wanted out of it. She just did it, the mix of punching, kicking, and wrestling without much in the way of formal rules appealing to her. She didn’t do it often, and only floating competitions. In her line of work, you didn’t want to attract undue notice. She always won. With her strength and durability there wasn’t anyone that could best her. But this Stangri, Gyeong… he’d been a tough opponent, and unlike most Stangri he did not seem to find it odd that a woman wanted to be in the ring. He’d somehow sensed she was not what she seemed, had let go and danced away when his holds failed, and he had incredible dexterity, dodging her attacks. It had been a long time before she finally landed a solid blow, and even then she’d had to use a lot of force. And at the end he had grinned, blood pouring from spots where things had gotten a little rough, and said she was a worthy opponent and that they should meet again.
And they had met again, twice, in private sparring matches she’d also won, and the Stangri had wanted to come back for more each time, and not for her looks or for revenge; just to have a worthy opponent. She’d kind of liked him for that.
Delia went on. “Just simple matches. We didn’t talk much at all, and I don’t really know anything about him; it’s just unusual to have a Stangri that far west in Kethem, so I remember him.”
Teinhaj was still staring at her in amazement. “You. Mautua matches on the waterfront.”
“Me. Mautua. Hell, Tei… Commander, I don’t even sleep. What do you think I do with my time off, stand in a corner gathering dust?”
Teinhaj had never thought about it before. He shook his head to clear it. “A topic for another time.” He turned back to the other woman. “Corel, continue.”
Corel went through the remaining list of everyone that had been on the expedition. Teinhaj listened carefully. When she was through, he nodded. “Ok, then. Padan can’t teleport back to Tawhiem, or at least not anywhere near where they ended up. There’s no teleportal pad or any other way to lock in his destination, so they are on their own for the moment. But we should assume they will make it back. For some of them it should be pretty easy to dig up their history. The high born lady, Daesal, the drunk, Stegar, and the priest Hantlin. Daesal may not have said much about herself, but there aren’t that many holder’s daughters out adventuring. We can have a few discreet inquiries made on the waterfront for the Stangri, Gyeong. If he was fighting there, he must have lived there. The thief may be a bit tougher–he sounds like someone living off the grid–but let’s put out feelers. I want to know who these people are. And, more important, I want to know when they get back.”
“And then?” asked Corel.
Teinhaj grinned. “Then we ask nicely about their experience. If they don’t like to share… Daesal might be a problem, but the rest aren’t Holder’s daughters. We squeeze them until they change their minds.”