I sat.
“May I assume, from your expression of owlish astonishment, that you are unaware of recent events?”
“Yes, Chancellor.”
“Ah, academics.” She set a slim cigarette between her lips and leaned minutely forward. I found my hand already holding a match, as if I’d been waiting for this very moment. My vision doubled as I cradled the flame, so that my hands were trailed by their own twins. I blinked hard.
Vivian exhaled dense white smoke through her nose. She consulted the fine gold watch on her wrist. “Ten hours ago, Chancellor Gladwell was assassinated by anti-colonial radicals. Five hours ago, I took emergency control of our armed forces. Two hours ago, the other ministers voted me in as acting Chancellor.” Her smile tilted. “It was still close. I won them a war and averted a crisis, and they nearly gave it to the Minister of Agriculture.”
She unfolded a paper and slid it across the desk. The headline readGLADWELL ASSASSINATED; NATION IN SHOCK.The rest of the page rippledlike dark water in my vision. Disquieting phrases floated to the surface:anti-colonial extremists; act of treachery; emergency measures.Most of the other ministers had declined to speak with the press, but Vivian Rolfe had given them their pull quote:The most dangerous enemy is the one we trust enough to turn our backs on. Be warned: We will not turn our backs a second time.
I said, weakly, “Oh.” I thought of the grim-faced guards outside her door. The sound of boots on marble, and the butt of a rifle poised above my father. “So the protesters outside, as I arrived—”
“Are being interrogated as we speak.”
“But surely they weren’t responsible for the attack. They’re certainly, ah, disruptive, but I know they’re notassassins.Please, Chancellor, my fath—”
“It would not,” she interrupted firmly, “be a wise moment to express sympathies with any radical groups or individuals, or to disclose any familial ties with the same.”
I heard the clack of my teeth as I shut my jaw. I imagined my father—a drunk and a deserter, who would not be missed by anyone save the barkeep—interrogated by a government who badly wanted someone to blame. Even if he didn’t confess, they would surely raid his house, and how long would it take them to crack his little cipher of misplaced punctuation and counted letters? I’d broken it when I was ten.
A voice in my mind said:Every story needs a villain.The voice was not mine.
Vivian was still watching me with the detached expression of a jeweler holding a gem up to the light, looking for flaws. I clenched my jaw so hard my molars hurt.
She nodded sharply, screwing her cigarette into an ashtray and squaring her shoulders in the manner of someone who has just mounted a podium. “Our country,” she said, “is at a crossroads.”
Then she told me that Dominion had lost its way. That glory was within our grasp, but that we had forgotten where we came from and what we fought for and needed to be reminded.
There were pauses spaced judiciously throughout this speech, as if for applause. Into one of them I said, perhaps less politely than I should have, “You have the book, don’t you.”
A flash of annoyance in her face, there and gone again. Her smile was indulgent as she set the book on the desk between us. “You have served your country well, Owen Mallory.” Her voice lowered to a throaty near-whisper. “Are you the man who will save it?”
I felt then that I was standing outside my own body, watching the way her words worked on me. The shine of my eyes, the bob of my throat. The pitiful urge to please, to serve; the hunger of a useless boy to be used.
She told me they had chosen me particularly for this work, and I shivered all over, like a dog. She told me they needed me, and I went willingly to heel.
I watched myself and felt nothing but disgust, that I could so easily forget my father’s face as he fell. The weight of a body in my arms—not my father’s, after all—the wet heat of the blood that soaked my shirt, my knees, my hands—
I blinked down at my own hands. Perfectly clean. Perfectly dry.
“—time like the present. Get in touch when you finish your translation.” Vivian spoke in casual dismissal, already rummaging through her desk drawers.
I stood unsteadily, reaching for the book with hands that were not covered in blood and never had been. I said, “Yes, Chancellor,” but didn’t leave. I ran the pads of my fingers over the cool wood of the cover, tracing the bent spine of the dragon. I found my mouth opening without my intention or permission. “Why?”
“Ah!” Vivian held a letter opener aloft in triumph. Then she said, coolly, “Pardon me?”
There was a craven, awestruck part of me that wanted to fall to the floor in apology. I locked my knees against it. “You don’t really needThe Death of Una Everlastingto gin up support for the occupation—”
“Reconstruction.”
“—because the assassination will give you all the support you need. You’re the Chancellor of Dominion, now. So why… bother?”
Why bother to slip a significant historical discovery onto the desk of a floundering scholar? Why flatter and entrance him, so that he was half ready to ride into battle in your honor? Why lock up an old, foolish man and his foolish friends?
Vivian didn’t answer immediately. She regarded me with rueful good humor, as if I’d surprised her, not unpleasantly. “Well, you’d be no good to me if you were stupid,” she murmured. Then, louder, “I meant everything I’ve said: Weareat a crossroads, and wehaveforgotten ourselves. This story…” She nodded at the book, still flat on the desk. “It’s who we are, how we make sense of the world. I’ve seen early drafts of tomorrow’s papers. One of the cartoons shows a mob of radicals, and the caption readsSir Ancel’s Heirs.There’s also a rather striking drawing of me with a crown—do you think they could ever have conceived of a female chancellor, had it not been for Yvanne?”
A private smile, then, as if she were sharing a joke with someone who wasn’t in the room. Then she tapped her knuckles briskly on the desk. “But you’re right. I don’t need the book to hold the Hinterlands, or to be Chancellor.”
