Amber, year nine, day 305 continued

	Bleys can be such a bastard.  I would have allowed him to do the
scan, anyway.  He didn't need to lie and get our hopes up by saying he
could help us track down Felix.  Bastard.  What did he do to me, anyway? 
I don't care what he says, it can't be normal for me to lose a stretch of
time like that.  Tamaryn couldn't find anything, but I'm sure Bleys could
hide something from her if he wanted to.

	Well, that seems to have settled it.  Felix isn't with Eric. 
Caine isn't answering his Trump.  And Ahab's note made it pretty plain
that he doesn't want any of us going into Shadow after Felix.  I will have
to trust him in this.  But I don't have to like it.  I hate the idea of
just sitting around while Felix is out there all alone.

Vetchways

	Gods, I am so tired of people messing around with my mind.  Brand
kept me from learning magic for almost ten years.  Sand used me to nearly
kill Riftvan.  And now this.  Isn't there anyway to stop people from doing
this?  There has to be.  I hate this feeling of not even being able to
trust yourself.

	It feels so very strange...  I've never killed anyone like that
before.  I've killed countless numbers in battle, of course, but never in
that manner, out of the blue, without them even knowing that they were in
a fight until the blade was buried in them.  I'm not sure how to feel
about this.  The man deserved it, truly.  And I had to take him by
surprise, or he would have simply cut the contact.  And I was acting under
a compulsion, anyway.  It's just that...  When I asked Riftvan to train
me, I never thought I'd actually use what I learned on anyone.  I had no
desire to become an assassin, after all.  I just wanted to know what the
children would be learning, if they chose to be assassins.  Oh, there were
aspects of it that I found useful.  Knowing how to kill someone quickly
can be just as useful in a battle as in an assassination.  I just never
thought I'd greet someone, then bury a blade in their throat, before they
even realized what was happening to them.  How does Riftvan do it?  I
don't know.  I've never been particularly happy about belonging to a house
of assassins, and knowing what Riftvan does when he's away, but at least I
could hold onto the fact that I was not an assassin.  I was still true to
what I was.  Only, I'm not, anymore.  And I'm not certain what that makes
me.

	At least the man didn't actually look like Riftvan, this time.  It
would have made things even worse, if he had.  Of course, this means that
Riftvan never actually contacted me yesterday, so I don't even know if
he's still alive.  Oh, gods, I don't want to think about that.  It was
such a relief to know that he was all right.  Why did that have to be a
lie?

Vetchways, year nine, day 306 (Monday, July 3)

Morning

	I didn't sleep terribly well last night.  There's just too much on
my mind.  The missing people.  Riftvan.  Everything that happened last
night.  I hope I can find Usires in Amber today.  At least if I can work
on the problem of the Takaran blades, it will take my mind off of all of
the things I can't do anything about.

Amber

	Well, I managed to find Usires, but matters have become more
complicated.  I now know the name of the woman who was to make the
modifications to Usires' ax, but since she has closed up her shop, this
does me little good.  She took Usires' ax with her, though, so we should
be able to track her down that way.  I don't imagine this will take too
long.  There's only so many places she could be, after all.

	It would seem that I was wrong about how easy it would be to find
this Miranda.  She has managed to leave Amber.  How was she able to move
through Shadow?  She shouldn't have been able to do that, unless she was
an Amberite.  Or a Chaosite.  I find this worrisome.  At any rate, Usires
and I cannot proceed alone outside of Amber.  With Dara out there, it
would be too dangerous, and Ahab was pretty dead set against going out
into Shadow alone.  I think I'll contact Lavender, first.  She is my
cohort in this little investigation of ours, so she'll understand why I'm
doing this.  If we can get Foster and Tamaryn to come along, we should
have enough to people to be relatively safe.

	Lavender came through, along with a posse far larger than anything
I had been imaging.  Of course, they were already involved in another
project, namely finding Dara's Logrus ghosts, but they're currently
sidelined while Bleys tracks down Lyss.  How many of us did Dara's Trump
artist get to, anyway?  Apparently Foster was also under her control. 
Well, until Lyss returns, Lavender and the others have agreed to accompany
us, so at least we'll be able to make a little more progress.  I just hope
we find Miranda before Lyss returns, because I don't think Usires will be
willing to go back to Amber empty-handed.

	Bartholomew is certainly in rare form today.  Why doesn't Foster
realize that he's only encouraging him by responding the way he is? 
Perhaps it is a characteristic of Vetch males.  It does remind me of that
time when Erryn was flirting with me, back on the Disc.  Not that Riftvan
reacted quite as obviously as Foster, but he did look rather annoyed, as I
recall.  It is flattering to know that someone loves you so much that they
are jealous, but there are limits.  It's not as though Bartholomew did
anything more than pay Lavender compliments.

Somewhere in Shadow

	Lyss has rejoined us, none the worse for wear.  Bleys appeared
soon afterward, and deprogrammed Usires as well.  I'm beginning to wonder
if there's anyone in my generation that Dara didn't get to.  Since the
direction we were already heading in coincided with the direction Lyss
planned to go, we are still traveling together.  I suppose this is
fortuitous, but it also makes me very nervous.  Lyss is tracking Dara,
after all.  I suppose it could be a coincidence that her path and that of
Usires' ax lie in the same direction, at least at this early stage.  But I
suspect otherwise.

	Bartholomew was responsible for Dara being in Amber.  Gods, I'm so
furious...  I want to yell at him, to ask if he knows what he did, to show
him what he did...  I guess what stopped me was knowing that if he wasn't
already bothered by what he did, nothing I said was going to change that. 
He's blaming Ahab, of course, for putting him in charge of Lyss' group in
the first place.  I don't understand why Ahab put him in charge, but that
doesn't absolve Bartholomew from what happened.  I wish he had seen the
carnage Dara caused.  Maybe then he wouldn't seem so cavalier about it.  I
don't understand.  He's always the one who goes on about not wanting to
take any life, even those of people like Sand.  How can he not be upset
about causing the death of so many?  Does the fact that he didn't directly
kill them make it acceptable?  I don't know.  Bartholomew is difficult to
read, sometimes.

Afternoon

	Lavender is a dear friend.  As she said to Bartleby, we are more
like soul sisters than anything else.  So she, more than anyone, should
understand why I couldn't leave.  Perhaps she did, for she didn't order me
to go, even though she knew I would have obeyed her.  I understand her
concern, and I have no wish to injure myself or the baby, but I cannot go
to safety while leaving my friends in danger.  If I went home, and
something happened to any of them, I could never forgive myself.  It's not
as though I'm not careful.  I always wear my armor now, and I would not
stay if I did not feel I was capable of defending myself and others, or if
I thought I would be a burden.  Lavender is concerned that the baby will
make me a special target, but I do not think this is so.  I have been
dressing such that my pregnancy is not obvious to the casual eye, at least
not yet.  And when Dara had assassins attack the Pattern babies, and those
carrying them, no such attack was made on me.  Maybe it was because she
doesn't know I'm pregnant.  Or maybe she can't reach me in Vetchways, and
my time in Amber adheres to no particular schedule.  Or maybe I'm just not
that important to her.  In any case, I doubt I'll be her primary target if
she attacks.  I rather think Lyss will occupy that category, since she is
our means of tracking Dara.  Besides, Dara's Trump artist was able to
reach me in my own home.  I'm not sure any place is truly safe anymore. 
Especially not now.  If Dara wins, none of the Pattern children will be
allowed to live, and it won't matter how careful I was to stay out of
danger.

	The two paths continue to coincide.  It seems obvious at this
point that Dara is responsible for the disappearance of Usires' ax,
doubtless in an attempt to lure him alone into a trap.  Well, it's not
going to work out quite the way she anticipated it would.  We've sent
Bartholomew into the Shadow to locate her, and then Lyss is going to shut
everything down except for Pattern.  That's when the rest of us go in. 
Except for the Logrus masters, of course.  Unless this is the real Dara,
she will be trapped.  And if it's the real Dara?  We do our best to fight
her.  It seems rather unlikely, though, that she'd be personally present
at a trap she set up for just one Amberite, especially one of our
generation.

	It was the real Dara, after all, and we almost had her.  We were
so close...  Damn!  I would have liked there to be an end to this.  I
would have liked for Riftvan to come home.  If we'd gotten her, I know
everything wouldn't have been resolved, but much of it would have.  If
only Bartholomew had been able to find her before we made our attack.  But
we couldn't have left Felix in the situation he was in.  What was he doing
there, anyway?  It's rather ironic, when you think about it.  None of us
were out here looking for Felix, but we found him all the same.  Although,
he doesn't look at all like Felix.  What could have happened to him?  Was
Dara responsible?  Or was this some part of Ahab's plan?  I don't know,
but he's lucky we came across him when we did, or Dara might have him by
now.  How did he wind up in a trap laid for Usires?  I guess he was trying
to find Gerard again.  At least we have Gerard back now, but if Dara could
change him such that he was someone else in both mind and body, what has
she done to Benedict?  It is a disquieting thought.