Jean Lorrah - Empress Unborn

The rest was filled with rocks. The minute I saw that, I realized the lady was testing me, as it were-an’

after all, I couldn’t blame her, now could I?”

“Oh, no,” Julia agreed, “you couldn’t blame her.”

“But the thieves insisted I’d stolen the rest of the jewels and hid em, and they were gonna make me tell

‘em where. I kept askin’ ‘era to take me back to the city to ask the lady ‘erself- that’s how I knew they weren’t really city guards.

“Finally,” Wicket continued, “the head torturer took ‘is dagger, and threatened to put my eyes out if I didn’t tell. But I couldn’t tell, because I hadn’t stolen any jewels. He didn’t believe me-but I believed him.”

Wicket was sweating at the memory. “I thought his ugly face was the last thing I’d ever see. But then all of a sudden he fell-with an arrow stickin’ out of his back!”

“Pyrrhus,” said Julia.

“Pyrrhus,” Wicket agreed with a nod. Then, a look of shocked awareness crossed his face. “By the gods, now I know why he saved me. It was that they were going to put my eyes out.”

Wicket covered his face with his hands for a moment, then drew a shuddering breath and let them fall again, gathering control. “Afore they could run, four more arrows took the rest of em, and then Pyrrhus came out of the forest.

“Y’understand, I still didn’t know if I was gonna be killed. It was only one man, but he’d taken out five.

He pocketed the jewels that were there, and then came over to me. You’ve seen how cold his eyes can be. I thought sure I was in for more torture-but he just asked me, ‘Will you go back to the lady with me, and the surviving treasure? Or were you lying?’

“I told him I wasn’t lying. We went back to the lady, told her what had happened-and almost got arrested.

“Turned out her maid had-uh, tried to protect her, she claimed. ‘Twas Pyrrhus figured that out, too-saved me again, from prison or worse.

“The lady apologized all over the place for accusing me, gave me a reward for my trouble, gave Pyrrhus a reward for saving my life and the jewels I had been carrying, and then she hired the two of us to take the treasure to her estate.”

“And you did it?”

Again the look of offended innocence. “Of course we did! D’you think we’d rob a widow?”

No- widows and orphans were considered out of bounds by the thieves and cheats I grew up among, too , Julia conceded. But what she said aloud was, “You and Pyrrhus have been together ever since.”

“Yes.”

“And you never found out anything about his background?”

“He was never very communicative on the subject.” Wicket sighed. “Obviously he was used to schedules and discipline, and he talks educated. I figured younger son of a wealthy family, sent into the military. I always assumed he was a deserter from the army-lot of those, you know, after the Battle of the Bog.”

“Battle of the-?” Julia giggled. “Oh, it was funny,” she said, “when we created that quicksand to trap the Aventine army.”

“Yeah, but not to them,” said Wicket. “You defeat people in battle, outnumber them, outfight them-what’s left will hang together, ready to fight again to the last breath. But you make fools of ‘em, you get a whole army vowing vengeance. But there’s no more unity, ‘cause they don’t trust officers that let them be made fools of.”

“And Pyrrhus is obviously a man who will not be taken for a fool,” Julia observed. “Your reasoning was sound; there was no way to guess he had been a Reader.”

“Had been.” Wicket shook his head. “No-won’t think about that. It’s your turn. Tell me about Portia.”

“She was Master of Masters among Readers for many years,” Julia said. “Master Clement says that for a long time she did her job well and honestly, but in the last years of her life she became corrupt. Perhaps we’ll never know why-we’re still finding out what she did.”

“What she did to Pyrrhus,” said Wicket. “Did she do that to any other Readers who found out about her?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of-and I think I would have, Wicket. I’ve been pretty much in the center of verything here in Zendi, and I was in Tiberium when it fell. Portia usually arranged to have her enemies killed, but it didn’t always work. She exiled my father to the Savage Lands, figuring he couldn’t help revealing himself as a Reader, and he’d get killed.”

“Your father?”

“Lenardo-Lord Reader of the Savage Empire. Aradia is his wife.”

“But she’s not your mother.”

“She’s getting to feel like my mother a lot of the time,” Julia admitted.

“Go on about Portia.”

“From her position as Master of Masters, she used Readers to spy on people, influence political decisions, business transactions. At the peak of her power, she had far more influence over what happened in the Aventine Empire than the Emperor.

“You probably know that a few Adepts survived inside the Aventine Empire, even when it was death to be discovered. Portia had at least one under her control, and there may have been more. As she grew older she acquired more and more power. But the Master of Masters isn’t supposed to have that kind of power, so she had to cover up even more. That meant getting rid of Readers who found out.

“Her favorite method for putting such Readers where they could not harm her was what she originally planned for Pyrrhus: rig tests so that they failed, and then put them on the Path of the Dark Moon. That meant marrying them off to other failed Readers-but the ceremonial wine was drugged with a derivative of white lotus.”

“The dream drug?” Wicket shuddered. “Yes-Pyrrhus said they were going to use it on him. No wonder he ran away. That stuff is worse than poison.”

“Yes-but they didn’t use the addictive part. It was an extract that destroyed the will and allowed the Readers present at the marriage to mold the minds of the bride and groom. Back when they failed only real Dark Moon Readers, who honestly didn’t have the ability to reach the upper ranks, the drug was intended as a kindness, to make them fall in love with one another. But when Portia and the Council of Masters were failing Magisters and even Masters, they also used the drug to reduce their powers.”

“Then why-?”

“What was done to Pyrrhus? Even with reduced powers, a Reader is a Reader. Wicket, I’m telling you what facts we know, but all the people who can explain why are dead.”

“I’m glad Pyrrhus had a hand in killing Portia,” said Wicket.

“I’m glad I did, too,” Julia agreed.

They parted then, Wicket to the bathhouse, Julia to tell Aradia what she had learned, and then take her daily lesson with Master Clement. She found him in his study, reading scrolls brought from Portia’s Academy in Tiberium.

“Read with me, Julia,” he instructed. He meant the way he was reading-by Reading.

The scrolls remained in their racks, while Master Clement scanned through the writing on them in search of any reference to Pyrrhus. It was much faster than lifting each one down, unrolling it, and scanning the pages by eye.

But Master Clement had been at it all morning, and had not found what he was looking for.

“Would Portia write down such a terrible thing?” Julia asked.

“Perhaps not,” Master Clement agreed. “But I have to search. I have to know-”

— if there are others,” Julia completed the thought. “If there are, I doubt that they’re alive. I think I would kill myself if it happened to me.”

“Julia!” exclaimed the Master of Masters. “You must not think such a thing. Pyrrhus was right to salvage what he could of his life. Child, I have seen Readers lose their powers before.”