CHAPTER EIGHT
I do what Thalia suggested I should do when we met: I send a message to the tower using a bird. It's a brightly colored parakeet that no one would think of it as a messenger bird, but I can control it well enough to send it where I want.
I consider my message carefully, knowing that my words must be enough to persuade Alaric to meet with me. I’m sure Thalia will help me but she isn't the head of the resistance, just one of Alaric’s lieutenants. She can't decide to bring its full power behind me to fight against Selene.
But it's about more than the practicalities. I want to see Alaric. I miss him, and everything that used to be between us. I miss his sharp wit and his sense of danger, the feeling, not that I was ever safe with him, but that at least he would stand with me against the world.
So I write carefully, determined to make sure Alaric sees the importance of this message.
I need to meet with A. Selene Ravenscroft is gaining control of the senate using psychomancy. Already she's forced herself into a role as an adviser. It's only a matter of time before she has full power. If we don't work together, it could mean a return to the empire. Please. L.
I don't know if the message will be enough.
I suspect it will get me a meeting with Thalia, but she's not the one I want to see.
I roll the message tightly, tying it to the leg of the bird, then using my powers to send it out over the city, fluttering through the district given over to thinkers, mages, and philosophers until I reach the top of the tower where I met Thalia before.
She's there, so I have the bird tap against the frame of the window until she notices. She takes the note from its leg and reads carefully, her face grim. She looks straight at the bird, obviously guessing that I can see through its eyes since it hasn't left.
“I'll talk to him,” she says. “For something like this, he might be willing to meet with you, but I can't make any promises.”
I cut the connection to the bird, then pace my rooms, waiting for an answer.
But as the minutes stretch out, I can't simply stay there.
Instead, I head through the palace determined to get on with the work of a senator.
There are always meetings and discussions on different issues, and even when there aren't any formal committees, there are always small groups of senators talking to one another.
I find Senator Olivia talking to a few of the others from different factions within the senate: military men who would never normally have much to do with her. She's noble, but she's soft and hedonistic in a way that's at odds with the military discipline they’re used to.
“I know we don't have much in common most of the time,” Olivia says to them. “But perhaps the time has come to correct that. I'm holding a gathering in the reception rooms of the colosseum that I would love you to attend.”
“One of your parties?” a senator named Nasos says, with a note of contempt. “Do you really think we can be lured in with drink and women?”
“Nothing so wild this time,” Olivia says. “But since Selene Ravenscroft is going to become an adviser to the senate, it occurred to me it might be good for you to meet her. Perhaps once you've spoken to her it will assuage some of your fears about her.”
I realize what she's doing: trying to get as many people as possible to come into contact with Selene. If Selene really does have psychomancy on her side, it will allow her to gain control of more senators.
“Don't go,” I say to them. Not that I'm exactly their favorite senator.
I'm a common-born and former gladiator. Men like this probably can't understand why I'm on the senate at all.
If they respect me it's usually because of my role in the rebellion or because of my connection to Marcus.
And that connection has largely been severed in the past couple of weeks.
Olivia looks offended. “This is a private discussion, Lyra.”
“We'll think about what you've said,” Nasos replies. He looks from me to Olivia and back. “Now, excuse us.”
As they go I catch Olivia by the shoulders, looking her in the eye.
“I know what you're planning, or rather, what Selene’s planning,” I say.
Olivia looks offended. “This is the nonsense you've been spouting about mind control? I am fully in control of myself. I've just seen that helping Selene helps all of us. There are going to be so many more-”
“Opportunities for pleasure?” I say. “You keep saying that whenever I ask about her.”
“Because it's true,” Olivia says.
“You need to fight this,” I insist, taking her hands. “Fight back against whatever control she's exerting.”
Olivia pulls away from me. “I will not stand here and be insulted like this. Your behavior is not that of a senator.”
She strides away from me. I feel helpless to stop what I believe Selene is doing to the senate. She's taking control of it little by little, and without help, I won't be able to stop her.
Which is why I'm grateful when a servant runs up to me and shoves a note into my hands, hurrying away before I can get a good look at them.
I will be where you met Thalia. A
Those words instantly fill me with both excitement and trepidation as I read them.
Alaric finally wants to meet after all this time spent mistrusting me.
The hope that brings with it is almost enough to make me forget about the danger I'm in. I've already rejected Selene’s offer to work with her. I have no doubt that if she gains control of the city, she’ll take steps to eliminate me and those I care about before we can become threats to her.
It's one more reason I need to talk to Alaric.
I need to tell him just how much danger he's in.
I hurry back to my rooms, dressing in a simple, dark blue dress and wrapping a cloak around my shoulders.
I head out into the city, using the eyes of the birds to watch for danger.
It's just as well I do because I can see a couple of guards following me.
I hurry down an alleyway, borrowing some of the climbing ability of a gecko clinging to a wall so that I can make my way up onto the roofs. I keep my head down and scurry along for the length of several buildings before dropping down into the streets again, and now it seems I've lost my tail.
Who sent the guards? Rowan? Could his insistence that I talk to Alaric be a trick to expose him so the guards can grab him? No, I think Rowan understands the seriousness of the situation too well for that. Which means that someone else sent them, maybe someone influenced by Selene.
I make my way to the tower quickly now, knocking on the door and waiting. One of Alaric’s artists opens the door, looking me up and down. Once he realizes it's me, he nods to the stairs.
“He's waiting for you in the top room.”
I hurry up through the tower, making my way up to the same room where I met Thalia before. Alaric is waiting for me, one leg on a table as he leans back in a chair. He’s artfully posed and, with Alaric, it probably is a pose, designed to catch my attention.
He would have anyway. Alaric is so painfully handsome it verges on the beautiful, his features sharp and fine boned, his dark hair hanging to his shoulders, so that his dark eyes peer out from beneath it.
He's wearing simple, dark clothing that seems to be carefully neutral, designed to allow him to pretend to be anyone he wants.
With his mastery of illusion magic, Alaric is skilled at making himself seem to be other people.
It's one of the reasons he hasn't been caught yet.
He's always been good at hiding his expressions, but I think I catch a hint of relief and longing as he sees me, before he hides it behind his usual arrogant mask.
“Lyra, I'm not used to people simply demanding meetings with me.”
“Am I just ‘people’ to you?” I ask, a little hurt by the idea that I'm the same as everyone else to him when we lived together back in Seatide. When we meant so much to each other. There was a time when I assumed we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
“You know you're not,” Alaric says, standing and moving to me. For a moment, he reaches out as if he might touch my face, but he pulls back at the last second, as if not wanting that contact after all, or perhaps remembering that we're not here for personal reasons. “You wanted to see me?”
It's difficult focusing just on the reason I'm here, rather than on the fact that Alaric and I are close to one another for the first time in a long time.
The last time I saw him was during the raid on the death match Marcus was running, and everything was chaos then.
I was angry with him too, because it felt as though Alaric was betraying me almost as much as Marcus, sending his people in to do violence and disrupt the fight, placing me in danger in the process.
“Nobody believes me but I think Selene Ravenscroft is gaining influence within the senate using psychomancy.”
Alaric’s eyes widen in surprise. “You're sure she has that power?”
I spread my hands. “It's impossible to be sure. It isn't an easy discipline to detect; it doesn't exactly leave spectacular traces. But people are acting in ways they normally wouldn't and there are small signs. Hesitations where there wouldn't be, people repeating the same phrases.”
“The kind of thing that would happen when Ravenna controlled someone,” Alaric says, his eyes narrowing now.
“If this is happening it's very dangerous.
I hate the corruption within the city but someone like Selene gaining control would be even worse.
And it fits with what I've heard. Do you know who she's been meeting with city officials in secret?”
“She's getting out of Ironhold to do it?” I say.
Alaric nods. “It clearly doesn't hold her. And some of them go to her as well, or meet her during the games.”
The fact that Alaric already knows this makes me wonder just how extensive his intelligence network is. Does his resistance movement have people everywhere?
“I want to stop her,” I say. “But I'm not sure what I can do.”
“And you want my help?” Alaric says.
I nod. “You're one of the only people I can trust. If she hasn't found you, there's no way she can have influenced you. And if she's controlling people in positions of authority, I need the help of people who are willing to fight against that authority.”
“I'm always willing to do that,” Alaric says. He reaches out for me more confidently now, his touch something laden with the weight of memories, filled with hints of all the times we've held one another before. “And you can trust me.”
I can trust him with this, at least. I just wish I could trust him with everything else.
I wish I could trust him with my heart, the way I used to.
It's so tempting to close the distance between us and simply kiss him.
So tempting to just fall back into old patterns with him.
I can feel my heart beating faster with the thought of it.
I have to force myself to pull back.
“Do you have any idea how we can stop her?” I ask.
“Short of just assassinating her in her cell?” Alaric says. He's always been much more pragmatic about violence than I am. He was much quicker to kill his opponents in the arena, and hasn’t held back since. In a lot of ways, Alaric is like the knives he wears at his belt: beautiful but deadly.
“Definitely short of that,” I say. I want to stop Selene, but I'm not just going to murder her. “I'm not sure we could do it, even if it weren't wrong.”
“Well then,” Alaric says. “I guess your next stage is to find proof that she’s doing what you say she is, while I get my people ready to resist whatever she tries.”
“How am I meant to prove it?” I ask. “Even with Ravenna, it was Selene who spotted the influence she used.”
“Selene’s wearing a dampener, right?” Alaric says.
I nod.
“Well, if she's influencing this many people in the city, she must have tampered with it somehow. If you can prove that, it will be your evidence.”
He's right and I turn to leave. Alaric stops me with a touch of his hand. For a moment I think he's going to turn me back and kiss me. He stands there hesitating.
“Be careful, Lyra,” he says. “I know you still believe in the way the city works, but Selene has the capacity to turn it all against you. I don't want to see you hurt.”
“I don't want to be hurt,” I reply, smiling. It's one of the reasons I'm glad he hasn't kissed me. I had thought things were finished between Alaric and myself. It turns out they’re as tangled and complicated as ever.