Alector's Choice Read Online Free PDF

splattered across his back and oozing over
the red garments.
    Brief as those five
strokes had been, even so, Dainyl had to brace himself against the agony
radiated from the malefactor and Talent-spread across the watching alectors. He
watched as several alectors swayed. One young man pitched forward, and those
beside him barely caught him before he would have struck the paving stones of
the courtyard.
    Two more strikes of
the lash followed before Dainyl could sense the emptiness that signified death.
He managed to keep his lips tight together.
    “Justice has been
done.” The High Alector nodded to the assistant with the Mace.
    She turned the Mace
on the figure in the frame. A pinkish purple haze flared over the dead alector,
then vanished. Only the empty frame remained.
    Actually, the Mace
was attuned only to the specially treated red clothing. With death, the
alector’s body would have turned to dust and less in moments, but the use of
the Mace provided absolute visual closure.
    Had justice been
done? Dainyl wasn’t sure of that. He was more than certain that, without the
visual and emotional reminders provided by the spectacle—and the required
regular attendance by all alectors—that far more abuse of position and Talent
would have occurred. Great power required even greater checks, as pointed out
so clearly in the Views of the Highest, and by there being two Duarches sharing
the administrative powers delegated by the Archon on Ifryn.
    But did such checks
provide true justice? That was another question, one that Dainyl could not
answer, not honestly.

6
     
    On Novdi afternoon,
two glasses before sunset, Dainyl and Lystrana stepped through the center
archway and into the concert hall of the Palace of the Duarch of Elcien. Dainyl
wore the blue-trimmed gray formal uniform of a Myrmidon colonel while Lystrana
wore brilliant blue trousers and a matching shimmersilk shirt, with a short
vest of paler blue. The vest was short enough that the wider, silver-gray belt
that matched her boots was fully visible.
    Dainyl surveyed those
already seated, without seeming to do so.
    “Seventy five,”
murmured Lystrana so softly that only he could have heard her, even with
Talent-boosted hearing. “We’re late.”
    He repressed a faint
smile, as they moved forward. “Not too late. The Duarch isn’t here.”
    Twenty five tables
were arrayed in an arc on the polished marble floor. Five chairs were set
around one side of each circular table, positioned so that all five could view
the dais on which four empty chairs awaited the performers. The center two
tables—reserved for the Duarch and his wife and guests—provided an unobstructed
view of the dais.
    The octagonal floor
tiles of green marble were linked by smaller diamond tiles of gold marble, and
each tile was outlined in brilliant bronze. The center of the floor just below
the performing dais was inset with an eight pointed star of golden marble a
yard across, also outlined in a thin line of a brilliant bronze. The hangings
on the side walls were green velvet, trimmed in gold, and set at precise
intervals to damp echoes without muting the quality of the sound.
    “We can sit with
Kylana and Zestafyn,” suggested Lystrana.
    “Of course.” Dainyl
understood that his wife’s mild words were anything but a suggestion. Kylana
was the assistant to the High Alector of Transport, and her husband was
officially the Duarch’s liaison to the regional alectors. Effectively, he was
the head of intelligence for the Duarch of Elcien.
    “Your mother is at
the next table,” murmured Lystrana.
    “I wouldn’t have
expected her. She usually avoids chamber concerts.”
    “Exactly.”
    Dainyl continued to
the table ahead, then stopped and bent, smiling at the black-haired woman—not
that any alector had hair other than shimmering black—who looked no older than
her son. “I hadn’t expected you here.”
    Alyra returned her son’s
smile. “Every so often I do come to a concert.” Her