Chapter 66

The next day was very busy for James and Dusty.

They had pleaded weariness and didn’t leave the hotel room as far as anyone other than Mica and their new team of mercenaries were concerned. Their guards were kept busy turning away a horde of people wishing to see Hasid. Some were not happy that they were being rebuffed.

While waiting for lunch, Dusty lifted her brace and said, “Rasp, report to me with the team, please.”

Three minutes later, she had the six mercenaries standing in front of her.

“I have presents for you all, but they do come with strings attached.”

“Make your offer, Princess,” Rasp replied.

Dusty held up a ring with a large diamond and two other yellow crystals in a low, triangular mounting. The thick band had identical symbols etched on either side of the band. The script they would find in the band said, ‘I serve all People’. It was etched on the medallions that the wizards had, too.

“If you choose to accept these items, you will be classed as novice mages. You all have some ability, and the ring will enhance your strongest ability. If you accept, the strings are the killing of innocents will not be tolerated, and if the ring leaves you because of wrongdoings, it will send you mad.”

“You can still be mercenaries as far as hiring out to protect others but not to assassinate. The compensations are that you will be a very effective unit, healthier, and live longer.”

“Together, you represent all six of the magical talents, and a group of even single-gemmed novices working to support each other can be devastating to non-magicians and even other low-order mages and novices.”

Rasp looked at his people and chuckled. “I’ll get strung up if I say no, so who is what?” Rasp asked Dusty.

Slick rolled his eyes, “Duh, Rasp! And you’re supposed to be the brains of this outfit.”

Arc sniggered, “I have a feeling our working names have a lot to do with our talent, don’t they, Princess?”

Dusty shrugged, “Hey, I didn’t pick your names. You lot did.”

Lilly said, “Nature, that’s me, and Puff has to be the Physics Novice.”

“Yep, and I’m the Energy Novice, and Steel has to be the Earth one. That leaves Slick as the Psychic, as we all knew, and the Boss will be Lore,” Arc replied happily.

“So, are all of you in?” Dusty asked, knowing damn well they were and not surprised that they knew as much about magic as they seemed to.

Rasp knelt, “I’d be honoured to serve you, Princess Wizard.”

The others also knelt and repeated what Rasp had said, so Dusty handed out the rings and gave them a new Mad to go with the ring. She told them about the entity, the spell book in the Mad, and the mini wand attached to it and told them to practice in safe places.

“I’m going to teach you two spells for ‘Sleep’ and two for ‘Immobilisation’. Some of you will be better at one and others at the other. Each action had two spells, one to do and one to undo,” Dusty told her attentive audience.

“They are always the first options to stop someone. It is often better to hit with immobilisation and then sleep if the person is in an unsafe location. You can use the sleep spell without immobilising them first if they are safe.”

They all nodded as they saw the advantages of learning these spells. They would be great for infiltration as well as stopping someone who planned to attack them or their principal.

Dusty spent twenty minutes with them and wasn’t surprised with who was better at which spell. She hinted they should always try to work with their opposite, and they got why straight away.

Puff replied, “I like these spells much better than having to kill guards who are just doing their jobs like us.”

“Can we still take out the baddies?” Rasp wanted to know.

“Yes and no, we would prefer you cuffed them rather than kill them,” Dusty replied and explained about cuffs as she handed each of them a small backpack that had ten cuffs in each.

She then explained they could keep a lot of crap in the packs and that they disappeared as if they weren’t wearing them. The packs would appear when they needed them to, and they couldn’t be stolen.

The team loved them and knew they were a gift they would be thanking her for many times in the future. Dusty sent them back to their duties and to check that the conference room was ready for the meeting the following morning while James was instructing the real waiters to put most of the food near Dusty’s plate.

The mercenaries smiled at James as they left, having heard of Dusty’s appetite.

The conference room was quite noisy on the morning of the meeting.

The fact the Minister for Finance was missing from the meeting was not lost on James or some of the other people in the room. Hiram had, in fact, turned up early for the meeting. His enquiries to the staff had borne no fruit the day before.

They all simply said they hadn’t seen the royals, and no, they hadn’t come down for meals, and no, they hadn’t heard of any disturbances since they had been in residence.

No one had been willing to tell him anything he wanted to know. The staff had been warned by Mica, of course, not that it was necessary. The staff had all heard the story of what the princess did to people who pissed her off.

Considering how sweetly she had thanked the waiters at dinner and again at breakfast and told them to thank the chefs and kitchen staff, they decided the stupid woman who had annoyed her had deserved her retribution for picking on a hormonal, pregnant woman.

They all agreed that the bitch trying to hustle Donia’s husband in front of her was also crass. Rather than make them fear her, Dusty had inadvertently pulled all of them to her side. The male staff were already in love with Princess Donia, so she couldn’t do anything wrong anyway.

James standing up for his wife and treating her like the princess she was, had also put him in the staff’s good graces. Most of the female staff thought he was gorgeous, and his chivalry was just to sigh over.