“Your maid is free to join us,” Aiden said. “Or so they said.”
Emily nodded, her thoughts spinning in circles. Someone on the council had to be working for the enemy. She knew it wasn’t Jair or Aiden, and she found it hard to believe it was Althorn, but... there were others. And if she could find that person before the deadline...
She met Aiden’s eyes. “I... who proposed it? Jair?”
“You’d think,” Aiden said. “But it was Bajingan.”
Emily blinked. The scribe? She supposed a scribe would have good reason to dislike her, but... Bajingan had built a whole career out of embracing the New Learning. And yet... her eyes narrowed. Bajingan was the secretary. He was in charge of the paperwork, of keeping the agenda and making sure things were kept in order. It might not be a position of apparent power - she’d heard of secretaries on Earth who’d demanded to be called administrative assistants instead - but a secretary had real power. Stalin had been a secretary. A traitor in the crown bureaucracy could be far more dangerous than any over-titled aristocrat, if only because he was beneath suspicion. Bajingan...
Her mind raced. The enemy magician had known the entire council would be gathered in one spot. Someone had to have told him. Bajingan? Jair had been the prime mover behind the queen’s trial, but... someone who knew him well could probably guess what he’d intended to do. And... it would only take a word or two in his ear, without even a drop of magic, to push him in the right direction. She felt her blood run cold at the thought. The terrorist attacks within the city had managed to slip through layers of defenses. If they’d been an inside job, right from the start... she gritted her teeth. Was it possible that the hardliners and the moderates had been fighting for power, while Bajingan had been quietly undermining both of them? She wouldn’t be too surprised to discover Bajingan had been the one who’d betrayed the moderates, when they’d met with her.
Careful, she caught herself. You don’t know he’s the traitor.
She hesitated, unsure how to proceed. Aiden was a good person - she thought - but could she be trusted? If she thought Emily was wrong...what would she do? Warn Bajingan? Or the rest of the council? Or... or what? Bajingan wouldn’t stay still, if he thought he was under suspicion. He’d slip into the poorer parts of the city and hide until the royalists arrived. She had to check him out, just to be sure.
Aiden frowned. “Lady Emily?”
Emily looked at her. “When you took me to the marketplace,” she said, “did you tell Bajingan where we’d be going?”
“The council wanted me to show you our brave new world,” Aiden said. “Bajingan would have known, yes.”
Emily’s imagination filled in the blanks. A cart full of gunpowder, with all the right permits to move through the city without being stopped and searched. A driver who didn’t know what would happen, when he lit the match, or... she grimaced. Whoever had charmed Fran could easily have rigged a detonator, something to produce a spark at the right time... it would be simple enough to link it to a chat parchment spell or a pair of conjoined gems. They would have watched from a safe distance or... hell, they could have tuned the wards to trigger the blast when Aiden and Emily crossed the line. She hadn’t sensed anything, but that was meaningless. Such a ward wouldn’t have to be that powerful. It might have gone unnoticed amidst the rest of the magic...
“Bajingan might be a traitor,” Emily said, quietly.
“Impossible,” Aiden said. “He’s a loyal rebel.”
Emily snorted, inwardly. A rebel wasn’t loyal... she pushed the thought out of her head and leaned forward. “He might not be in his right mind,” she said, instead. “There are spells to turn the most loyal of men into traitors.”
“I can’t believe it,” Aiden said. “He’s been a mainstay of the revolutionary movement for the last five years. He... he knows too much. If he was a traitor, he could have sent us all to the gallows. He could have...”
“He might have been loyal then,” Emily said. “I could cast a spell on you that would make you my willing slave, ready to do anything because I commanded it. Someone else... someone could have cast a similar spell on Bajingan, making him their puppet. It might not even be very noticeable, as long as the caster was careful.”
Aiden stared at her for a long moment. “Have you ever done it?”
“Once,” Emily said, curtly. She’d had no choice, but... she still felt guilty. “It can be done.”
“I see.” Aiden let out a breath. “And if you’re wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said. “Someone has to be the traitor.”
Aiden clenched her fists. “If you’re wrong about this, Lady Emily, I swear I’ll...”
“I understand,” Emily said. She felt an odd sense of kinship with the other girl. It wasn’t easy to point to one’s former ally and accuse him of treason, particularly unwilling treason. It would be seen as a betrayal, even if she was in the right. “I won’t blame you.”
She kept her doubts to herself as she left the room. Bajingan was the logical suspect, if his controller wanted to cause chaos rather than help one side to actually win. He was meek and mild, compared to his fellows. He didn’t have any real enemies on the council, which meant he was unlikely to be purged if the hardliners took control. And... he controlled the paperwork. Emily detested bureaucracy - she’d hated having to grind her way through the endless mountain of paperwork in Cockatrice - but she understood the importance of keeping everything straight. A traitor in the bureaucracy could easily do everything from misdirecting royal funds to simply ordering armories to provide weapons to the rebels.
Maybe that’s how they started to slip weapons into the city, she thought. The bureaucrats bought
