“You stupid, worthless child.” Senator Dolon spoke directly to Marcus, ignoring our presence and foregoing any preliminary greetings or enquiries into his son’s wellbeing, mental health or anything else regarding our general dire circumstances. “You’ve ruined everything.”
Marcus drew himself up and stood tall. Taller than his father.
“I did what I thought was right.”
“You have everything. I’ve given you everything and this is how you repay me.” As ever the doting father, worried less for his son than for his status in the city. “Why? What on earth possessed you? So much for your devotion to the poor masses.”
“I was doing it for them. What I was doing wasn’t enough. The Britons have a medicine that works; I wanted to find a way to help more people.”
“Well, that’s over now. You’ll never set foot in a hospital again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Governor Actaeon is furious that the mob and the praetor have shown mercy.” Dolon’s lip curled. “He never approved of the programme we set up to gain more magic within the walls and you’ve given him the perfect excuse to crush it… and you in the process.”
“What programme?” I asked quickly. There was no way I was missing the opportunity to discover more about the mysterious manipulations which had directly led to us being here. Yes, there might be more pressing issues, but I had been obsessing over this for months and here was Matthias fully acknowledging that such a programme existed. An actual thing.
“Ah, our little cuckoo. What a waste. So many years waiting for you to grow up, all for nothing now.” Matthias lifted the lantern from the stool and seated himself as if drawing up to a fire in a gentlemen’s club to settle in for a leisurely conversation debating the issues of the day. “We had such plans. You see, there is a faction within the council that has argued for years that we should figure out how to harness magic rather than eradicate it. Our advances in technology are rendered useless once we hit the ley line at the border. We’re still limited to the same tech there that has failed to gain supremacy for generations. We are tired of being trapped behind these walls. We want more. Following my wife’s untimely demise, no real Courtenay sat on the council to stand in our way, and we had a child with magic at our disposal. All we needed was another Briton and we could breed a little litter to study, so we could find a way to defeat the Wilders once and for all. It’s over now, of course.”
I was aghast at his casual confession of what he had done, of how they had planned to use us. I knew it was true, but to hear him talk about it so frankly, so utterly shamelessly… How could he, his own son? Devyn’s eyes met mine, wordlessly agreeing, conveying his contempt and distrust of a man who would do this to his own flesh and blood.
“You knew? They were planning to use me, to use my children.” Marcus spoke slowly, his tone cold.
“You wouldn’t have been harmed. Think of it. Rather than throwing your life away on a science already perfected, you could integrate it with native forms of healing.”
“As you dictated. Under your control,” I put in quietly.
I had seen Marcus in action at the hospital. He made no distinction between council member and sewer worker, but his father had never shared this view. Marcus had to know that any benefits of using magic would be made available to the elite first.
“Such a shame. There were so many advantages in a softer policy. Terrible waste, all that power. Actaeon is a fool. If we were to harness the power inside the city, we could achieve so much.”
“But the Empire hates magic. They would never have stood for it.” It was a central tenet of the Code.
“True, there have always been imperial zealots who wished to eradicate magic completely, who swept the city for any child unlucky enough to have a dormant gene show up. They thought they had thinned it down over the generations. Looks like they were wrong.”
“What do you mean they were wrong? Wrong about what?” I asked.
“Why, the Maledictio, my dear.” He used the name unknown to the public for the illness that wasn’t nearly as new to the Empire as the council let on. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Who it is this illness attacks? ”
Devyn believed there was a correlation between the illness and latent magic in the blood. Marina had been sick, and it seemed she was more than just a latent. But why let Senator Dolon know what we knew when it was so much more informative when he was doing all the talking? “I don’t understand. The illness attacks at random.”
Matthias looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Does it?” he huffed heavily. “Marcus, do I need to spell this out to you too?”
“No, Father. There was some basic genetic work done on Briton blood, but we don’t have much of it.” Marcus met my eyes; he had already informed me of the genetic testing back in the summer, encouraged me to get tested given my adopted status, but he betrayed no hint of that now. “In the tests on our own citizens, especially Shadowers and those who live near the walls, it seems there is an anomalous gene that lies dormant. It is often present in the ill; those with stronger bloodlines don’t die as quickly. It can take years, like my mother.”
“Bravo,” Matthias applauded sardonically. “Sooner or later it comes for anyone with magic in their blood.”
“Not in the rest of Briton. There is a medicine, something that treats the illness. People aren’t dying of it in the
