Chapter 21 #4
Handled. A nice euphemism for murder. It seemed that, in this grand scheme, Rose would become the serial killer of Sebastien’s family. A fitting task for an inhuman creature of the Dream. What a glorious future her father envisioned for her. But there were other questions.
“And how am I a free agent in this scenario? If my contract isn’t transferred, the blood geas will still bind me to Madame Hendricks.”
“That’s the beauty and subtlety of this plan.
” Her father opened his doubled fist and laid his palms flat on the table.
“Madame Hendricks will still hold your contract, but she won’t know it.
The physical copy of the contract will be with Soren and it won’t occur to Hendricks to enforce your obedience.
” He waited a beat, black eyes stark inside the wide white rings of his excitement, flicking back and forth between Rose and Shoshan.
“Don’t you see? She won’t be giving you instructions that the blood geas obliges you to follow.
If Soren tries to command you, it won’t work.
No one will even know that Thorn even exists, which will allow us to use her power, effectively doubling what you can do.
You will be able to work your considerable sorcery without the leash that constricts everyone else. ”
“The witch Gornicka had a double,” Rose commented, feeling as if she stood a little outside her body. “One of them eventually killed the other and no one knew which was which.”
“Fairy tales.” He brushed that off. “This is a gift beyond price that I’m giving you.
Don’t you realize that every magic-worker in existence would sacrifice anything to be in your position?
You will be bound to no one and nothing.
You’ll be able to accumulate wealth of your own.
Your debt won’t bind you. You’ll have ultimate freedom to do anything at all, and Thorn’s power to supplement yours. ”
“And you would be there to assist with it all.”
“A team, you and I, like always.” His expression wrinkled into something that he likely hoped looked like paternal affection but came out distorted.
“After all these years of keeping this to myself, it’s so good to share it.
To finally speak of it. To both of you,” he added, a bit too hastily, giving Shoshan a weak smile.
“I’d long hoped—I’d envisioned—that we three would work together.
Our small, private army of liberation. This isn’t how I planned to unveil my scheme, but I’m honestly grateful for this opportunity, as I didn’t know how I’d tell you when the time came.
Frankly, all these years of silence and secrecy have worn on me, every day.
You don’t know how hard it’s been on me, every moment afraid the truth would come out.
And now it has, but not to our enemies. We can be allies in this.
It’s truly a relief.” He blew out a breath and grinned at them, clearly recalculating when he saw no answering smiles.
“Shosh, I don’t expect you to forgive me, as I said already, and you do not have to be complicit, but Rose…
” He reached a hand across the table toward her, sliding it across the wood, his sweating palm leaving another track in the gloss, like a snail’s slime across a leaf.
She did not reciprocate, instead setting her hands in her lap.
“Rose,” he repeated, leaving his hand there, his smile insistent.
“We will make a great team. With your powerful abilities and my connections and planning, with Thorn’s sorcery as our secret weapon, we can accomplish great things.
You can truly become Empress of the Known World, just as I’ve always promised you. ”
And there it was. The end game: total power, the same thing everyone seemed to want.
“I thought you intended to free the magic-workers from this system that binds them to the blood geas in childhood.” At the last moment, she lifted her tone on the final word, to dress it up as a question, rather than an accusation.
Clotaire nodded, then wobbled his head from side to side. “That’s the point of rule,” he said, though unconvincingly. “We can only change the system from within. Once I am in charge, with you at my side—both of you, if you choose, Shoshan—then we can change the laws.”
“And eliminate the blood geas?” Rose pressed, strongly suspecting otherwise.
“For some, yes.” Clotaire held up a finger in a cautionary gesture. “Keep in mind why the blood geas was implemented to begin with. Surely they taught you that in school?”
“Yes, because centuries ago the most powerful sorcerers battled to rule, laying waste to entire kingdoms in their vendettas against one another,” Rose answered slowly, considering that very familiar history with a more cynical eye for the first time.
She thought also of Thorn’s untutored bumbling, her great potential, the disaster at the inn, the loss of Nina.
None of that would have happened if she hadn’t been uncontrolled.
“Their lust for power drove them to tyrannical heights and the abyss of the worst atrocities.”
Her father was nodding along. “It was critical for those sorcerers to be contained and controlled—or civilization wouldn’t have survived. They’d have destroyed all the world in their greed. Left unchecked, unprincipled sorcerers could rise again. Not everyone can be trusted to do the right thing.”
“So, you would be the one to decide?” Rose asked. “Who can be freed and who cannot?”
He nodded, then shook his head, frowning at her.
“You’re talking about decisions to be made years from now.
We’d have to purchase the contract on one of the sorcerers employed by the Guild for Sorcerous Compliance, so that they could then break the blood geas on those selected.
They’d have to be chosen carefully, perhaps reviewed by some sort of council who would decide.
” He shook his head again. “That’s a long time in the future, but you can be part of that decision process, Rose. You see?”
She did. All too well. And her mind was too sorrow-laden, too overwhelmed with all the implications and ramifications, for her to think straight.
So, she nodded, drumming up a smile, which seemed to please Clotaire and earned her the side-eye from Shoshan.
“Thank you for explaining,” she said, then pointedly looked at the clock on the wall and let out a sigh, as if aggrieved.
“I’ve been away too long from the academy. I must go.”
“But you haven’t explained how you found Thorn,” Clotaire protested.
“You know where she is. Ask her.”
“I’m not free to travel there yet.”
“Not my problem.”
Her father rose as she did. “Now see here, Rose. You’re still—”
Her mother saved her saying something that would cause a permanent breach, interrupting. “Sit. You and I have more to discuss.”
He didn’t accede right away, fastening his beseeching gaze on Rose.
“Must I enjoin you to speak of this to no one else? Especially Prince Sebastien. I realize you may be inclined, by habit, to confide in him, but he cannot know about Thorn, about any of our plan. What he knows, the king will know, and then all of our lives are forfeit. Including yours, and Thorn’s. ”
The words hovered on her tongue, longing to be flung at him, that Sebastien already knew, that he’d suffered from this plot of Clotaire’s along with them.
But that would gain nothing. And it bothered her on a level she’d not yet examined, that she’d performed the same political calculus as her father.
How different were they, under it all? Except he was human and she was … not.
She needed time to think.
She needed to talk to Sebastien, though she had no idea what to say.
But she owed Thorn the most. That meant walking the Dream back to the cottage.
So, she nodded to her father, a guarantee of nothing. “I’ll be in touch,” she said.
Shoshan rose with her, giving her a gentle, trembling embrace. “Will you … Would you, please, give Thorn a message from me?”
Throat thick, Rose nodded again, for entirely different reasons. “Of course,” she got out.
“Tell her…” Shoshan pressed her lips together.
“There is so much to say. I trust you to tell her what you think will most benefit her.” She flashed a hard glare at Clotaire.
“But please convey how very sorry I am. That I wish I’d known about her and now that I do, well, I want to arrange to meet her, to do whatever I can for her. ”
“Of course,” Rose repeated, then hugged her mother tightly. “It will matter to her,” Rose said quietly, “that you didn’t know. I’ll make sure she understands that.”
Tears spilled down Shoshan’s cheeks. “Thank you. I love you, so very much. And Rose?” She gently stroked Rose’s hair. “You are human,” she whispered. “I carried you in my womb and I know you. You are a person, not a creature, or some facsimile.”
Rose managed a wobbly smile and left before she started weeping, too.
All the grandiose demonstrations from Clotaire, the dramatic protestations of love and gifts, faded in the face of this quiet support from her mother, who had already forgotten that she hadn’t carried this Rose in her body at all.
This Rose was a changeling from the Dream, left in the cradle in place of the true Rose, the human child who’d perished before she truly lived.