When the flow of information finally stopped, the silence that followed was broken only by Beatrix’s gasping breaths. How was he to undo this disaster? Two hundred fifty women! And she was right—her numbers could top 100,000 in June,assuming each round of recruits took only two weeks to see their task through and he could still calculate accurately while in the middle of a breakdown. Oh, God. Oh,God.
“You’ve risked everything we’ve worked for years to achieve,” Lydia said, the words quiet, the emotion in them not. “How could you do this to me?”
Beatrix wrapped her arms around her stomach and turned to him. “Ask me,” she pleaded. “Not just what or how or when—ask mewhy.”
“Youtoldme why,” he objected. “In the cellar, when this terrible idea occurred to you. It’s about women’s rights?—”
“No,” she said, urgently. “I mean, tangentially, yes, but that’s not why I did it. That’s not even why Ithoughtof it.Pleaseask me why!”
Her sister’s expression hardened. “Do you know what? The reason doesn’t matter—there’s nothing that could make it better. You did this behind my back because you knew I’d never, ever agree. I don’t understand how your Vow to me evenletyou do something so clearly harmful to me and the League!”
In that instant he realized what it had been about, really about. It was so obvious, he should have caught on weeks ago—and had he done so, he would have understood that only by calling on her Vow would he have had a chance to stop it.
“Intent matters,” he told Lydia. A wave of sadness papered over his anger, and he sighed. “The Vow allowed it because she was doing this to try to protect you.”
Lydia looked outraged.“What?”
“Yes,” Beatrix whispered. Now—not before, when they’d both yelled at her and condemned her—her eyes welled with tears.
Her sister paced in a tight oval near them. “Why, for the love of all that is good, did you think this would protect me?”
Beatrix leaned toward her sister, hands clasped over her knees. “Because the magiocracy will cease to see you as a threat if they suddenly have to contend with thirty thousand or fifty thousand or seventy thousand women demanding equal magic-using rights.”
“And then what?” Lydia glared at her. “Do you really think that will revolutionize the magiocracy? No, they’ll find some second-rate jobs to stick these women in—‘Assist the omnimancers, there’s a good girl’—”
Beatrix winced. So did he.
“—and nothing will really change,” her sister said, throwing up her hands.
“Lydia, I?—”
“This is not what we wanted! Equal rights for women,andmen, regardless of whether they use magic. Haven’t you listened to a single speech I’ve given?”
“Lydia—”
“And have you forgotten what I’ve gone through towinthis position and how easily I could lose it? For God’s sake, the magiocracy put recording devices in every room of our house! They’re hoping to catch me—or someone close to me—doing something wrong. Somethingstupid.And what have you been doing the past month if not that?”
“It’s not wrong.” Beatrix lifted her chin. “It’s illegal, but it’snotwrong. And I’ll break any law I have to if it keeps you alive.”
Her sister pressed her fingers to her temples. “Listen to me: They’re not trying to kill me.”
“What?” he said, thinking he’d misheard her.
Beatrix’s eyes were wide with shock. “How can you say that?”
“I’ve wanted to tell you this for a while, but you were never around, and anyway it’s so hard to talk anymore,” Lydia said. “I’ve given this a lot of thought—” She gave a bitter laugh. “Alotof thought. The only way their tactics make sense is if October wasn’t a real assassination attempt.”
“Lydia,” Beatrix said, voice shaking, “the crane fell on my coattails. That’s how close it came. If I hadn’t pushed you out of the way?—”
“If you hadn’t pushed me out of the way, it would have barely missed me, just as it barely missed you.”
Tears slid down Beatrix’s cheeks, and he was certain—not as a result of their connection but because he knew her, hedid—that Lydia’s reinterpretation of what had happened hurt her more than anything else her sister had said. He could stand it no longer: He closed the gap between them and took her hand.
“Oh,” she whispered, looking at him for a brief moment before turning back to her sister. “Garrett admitted they were trying to kill you—he admitted it. Don’t you remember?”
“They were trying to rattle me into quitting. That’s why Garrett said it. If they couldn’t scare me into stepping down, they probably thought they’d cause us to do something foolish.”
He could see the logic, but he wasn’t convinced. It sounded to him like hopeful thinking on the part of an assassination target.
