And the trouble was, Falk thought as he ordered Verdsmitt returned to his cell, that Verdsmitt was absolutely right. He had been so eager to seize the troublesome playwright, to finally find a chink in the too-smooth armor of the Common Cause, that he had thought the public arrest would actually serve his ends… when in fact, as Verdsmitt had just pointed out, quite the opposite was true. The play had been provocative, certainly; yet he knew well enough there were those within the Twelve, and even within the Council, who would argue he had overreacted, seeing an opportunity to perhaps bring him down a notch.
Nor could he very well present his evidence that Verdsmitt had been involved in the assassination attempt against the Prince, when that evidence consisted of the word of Mother Northwind, and had been taken from the brain of a corpse.
Well. Verdsmitt himself would soon give him all the evidence he needed, he was certain. He would bring Mother Northwind to the Palace. He could not openly or legally use her special abilities to interrogate prisoners, but once she had the contents of Verdsmitt’s mind, she could surely point Falk to those who could be… convinced… to provide more conventional evidence against the playwright.
I’ll bring her back here when I bring Brenna, he thought. In the meantime, Verdsmitt can rot in that cell.
He went to his own bed after that, confident that the recent upheavals still posed no threat to the Plan. He had a couple of other matters to deal with that could not wait, but in two days he would return to his manor, collect Brenna, collect Mother Northwind, collect the newly compliant Anton, see this mysterious airship in action… if it worked… and then return to New Cabora, where his Plan would unfold as he had always anticipated it would, with smooth, devastating efficiency.
In six weeks, two months at the outside, he would be King. And once his power over the Kingdom had been secured by his hidden allies and Unbound followers, he would lower the Barrier and the MageLords would emerge from their Hidden Kingdom and take back their world.
All was well; soon, all would be even better.
Lord Falk settled into his bed and fell instantly and dreamlessly asleep, as close to carefree as he had ever been.
But that same night in Lord Falk’s manor house, Anton’s sleep was interrupted, once again, by Brenna at the foot of his bed.
He had been horribly ill for the rest of the day after his meeting with Mother Northwind, and the day after that, his head in agony, nausea gripping him. Shortly after returning to his room he’d thrown up every bit of the wonderful breakfast he’d had with Brenna. Healer Eddigar, summoned by Gannick, examined him, frowning, and declared he had obviously suffered a head injury in the crash that he had somehow missed on his first examination. He put Anton back into a magical sleep and watched him closely through the first night, then insisted he stay in his room resting for all of the next day, allowing him to sit and look out the window but not to go down the stairs. Brenna had visited him, looking pale and worried, which touched him, but Eddigar limited the time she spent with him.
By the end of that day he was feeling much better, and ate something approaching a full meal for supper. Despite having rested all day, he found himself exhausted again shortly afterward and went to bed early, falling asleep at once… only to be awoken by Brenna.
Not that he knew it was Brenna at first. All he knew was that he had been dragged out of deep, dreamless sleep by… something. At first all he could see was a flickering candle flame. It took another moment or two for his fogged brain to recognize the face of the girl holding the candle.
Brenna wore a long white dressing gown, cinched at the waist. “Anton,” she said in little more than a whisper, and he realized it must have been her speaking his name that had wakened him in the first place.
He raised himself on his elbows. “What… what is it?” he said.
“I need to talk to you.”
“In the middle of the night?” No light showed through the window. “What time is it?”
“Three hours past midnight.”
Anton dropped his head back on his pillow. “It couldn’t wait until morning?”
“No. And keep your voice down.” Brenna came and sat on the edge of the bed. He was suddenly acutely aware of her nearness, and of the fact he was nude beneath the blankets. “The guards are still outside.”
“All right, all right.” He stayed lying down, looking up at her as she turned her upper body toward him to look down at his face. “What is it?”
“You’re in terrible danger,” Brenna said. “You have to escape the manor within the next couple of days, before Lord Falk returns.” She held his gaze steady, her eyes wide black pools in the dim light. “And I have to come with you.”
“Danger?” Anton was certain that Lord Falk wouldn’t hesitate to harm him if he thought it would help the MageLord kingdom. But… “But I answered Lord Falk’s questions truthfully. Why would he harm me?”
“He already has,” Brenna said. “Mother Northwind-”
“The Healer?”
“She’s more than a Healer,” Brenna said. “She’s a powerful mage in her own right-soft magic, different than what Lord Falk uses. And she
… raped you.”
Anton blinked. “Um… I think I would have noticed.”
“Not that kind of rape,” Brenna said impatiently. “Mind-rape. She went inside your mind and stole your thoughts, stole them so she could give them to Falk. Things you didn’t think to tell Falk, or things he didn’t think to ask about, things that she had no business knowing, things no one should know about another person… she took them all. That’s why you’ve been sick. It’s the aftereffect.”
“I-” I don’t believe it, he intended to stay, but remembering how he had felt when Mother Northwind had touched him, and the strange way that horrible headache had come on afterward, he let the protest die unspoken. “How do you know?” he said instead.
“I heard them talking about it,” Brenna said. She looked down at her feet, cheeks flushed. “Maybe this will prove it to you. She mentioned a certain maid at an inn, twice your age, she said, who.. .” She left the sentence unfinished, and it was Anton’s turn to blush
… but hard on the heels of embarrassment-bad enough Mother Northwind had learned about that very-brief- but-messy encounter, but for Brenna to know, too!-came an emotion Anton had once known intimately when he lived on the streets of Hexton Down but had had little use for since the Professor took him under his wing: rage. Pure, unadulterated anger.
He sat up, the blankets falling to his waist. Brenna glanced at him, then averted her eyes again at once, but he hardly noticed. “I’ll kill her,” he said, and in that moment, he would have done it gladly, with a knife, with a gun, with his bare hands…
“No,” Brenna said. She still wouldn’t look at him. “You couldn’t. She’s protected.” She took a deep breath. “But that’s not all. Falk wants her to do… something else to you. Something worse.”
“Something worse than stealing my memories?” Anton snarled.
“Yes.” And now Brenna did look at him. “Falk wants her to twist your mind. To make you loyal to him, and him alone. To make you his puppet.”
Anton felt sick. “That can be done?”
“It can,” Brenna said. “It is the worst kind of violation, even worse than what that old witch has already done to you. The punishment is death… or would be, if Lord Falk weren’t the one tasked with enforcing the law forbidding such things!
“The worst of it is that after it is done, you would remember it being done and remember everything you knew and thought before it was done-but none of that would make any difference. You would be, now and forever, Falk’s creature, and would obey him to the death in all things.”
“But why?” Anton cried, forgetting to keep his voice down. Brenna shot a frightened look at the door, and he dropped it to an agonized whisper. “Why would he do that to me? What possible use could I be to him?”
“He wants you to fly that airship for him,” Brenna said. “And he thinks you might be useful later…” She shook her head. “It’s hard for me to believe this part, either, but I think Lord Falk is of the Unbound. They’re a… a cult that wants to destroy the Great Barrier. It’s impossible, of course, but I think he thinks he can do it. He wants the MageLords to rule your world as they do this one, as they did centuries ago.”
Anton would have said that was a fool’s hope, knowing what he did of the modern might of steamships and
