“There she is,” he says encouragingly to me, again in Basean. Hearing the language on the lips of the man responsible for tearing my life apart… I want to reach out and rip the words out of his mouth.
I see that we’re in the banquet room of Mara’s National Hall, the same chamber where Red and I had once stood before the Senate and demonstrated to the Speaker what we could do.
The Premier ignores the anger on my face, nods behind him, and lets me see everyone else in the room. A ring of his personal guards circles the space around us, their hands resting on the guns at their belts, their scarlet uniforms emblazoned with the Federation’s double crescents. My gaze stutters to a halt on the Speaker of Mara, who now stands in a corner with guards on either side of him, his hands behind his back. He clears his throat at me, but something in my stare must unnerve him, because he quickly averts his eyes.
Then I see her.
Chained and kneeling, with two guards on either side of her… is my mother. Bloodied, but alive.
I come fully awake now, and every muscle in my body screams in pain. A cold sweat breaks out all over my body—I struggle to catch my breath as the wound in my side and my leg flare to life. My eyes stay fixed on my mother, who stares back at me in anguished silence.
One of the soldiers steps forward, the ornate trim of his sleeves distinguishing him from the others. His gloved hands go to the sword at his belt.
The Premier just holds a hand up and shakes his head. He takes a few steps away from me and folds his arms across his chest. “Have you trained as a Striker all your life?” he asks me, this time in Maran.
I only nod at him.
“So, starting when you were twelve.”
Another nod.
“They say you can’t speak,” he muses out loud, “but I can arrange for my Chief Architect to fix that.”
My eyes narrow at his words. He doesn’t understand that scars can be invisible, that his soldiers—thathe—was the one who’d broken my voice. His words are so dismissive, so confident in his assessment and control over my own body that I resolve, in this instant, that I’d rather die than give him the power to force me to speak.
Beside him, one of his soldiers steps forward and bows his head. General Caitoman, the Premier’s brother who I’d first seen in Cardinia. He says something in Karenese, and the Premier considers me as the man talks. When he finishes, he nods at me. “I’m told you’re one of the best in Mara’s forces,” he says. “Your Firstblade tended to put you on the warfront, and I can see why.”
Aramin. Did he survive the massacre? What about Jeran, and Adena?
What about Red?
The Premier strides in a slow circle around me as I continue totremble from my pain. “I heard you took down more of my Ghosts on your own than anyone else out there on the field. Your Firstblade must have seen a great deal of potential in you.”
I hate that, in spite of everything, my heart jumps at his words.A great deal of potential.Not because Corian had taken pity on me, had spoken for me. Is it a cruel irony that the respect I’ve ached for comes from my worst enemy?
He stops before me again, the rings on his hand clinking as he holds his hand out. “Given your resemblance,” he says, “I’m assuming the woman chained behind me is your mother. Yes?”
A surge of strength jolts through me, and I lunge at him before I can stop myself. The chains holding me back pull taut, sending fresh pain lancing through my arms. Around the chamber, all the soldiers immediately lift their guns at me in a unity of clicks.
The Premier doesn’t flinch at my movement at all, nor does he smile. “It’s up to you,” he continues, “whether or not your mother lives.”
I don’t know if he can see the hatred burning in my gaze. My hands are trembling so hard behind my back that my chains rattle.
He looks grave now. “I know how hard everything must be for you,” he says. “How difficult it mustalwayshave been. You never had a chance to know your homeland of Basea, and when you and your mother fled into the borders of Mara, you ended up in a country that both sheltered you and insulted you.”
The manipulation in this man’s words.How would you know?I want to say to him, the thought barbed with rage. How could you begin to care about the pain that you have inflicted on this world?
Constantine smiles grimly at me, as if he can guess what’s going through my mind. “I know you see me as the source of your pain, that I take from you and your people without mercy. But the truth is that Iam here to build a better country for Mara. Do you know, Talin, what ended the Early Ones’ civilization?”
In spite of myself, I lean forward, suddenly curious to hear his answer. No one knows, I thought. It’s the mystery of their disappearance that’s always added a near-spiritual element to their ruins.
“I know. We found evidence of it in the ruins in our territory. They had built such a powerful society, had been poised to leave this world and travel to the stars. But they were careless too, in the way they lived and created. And when a weapon they built escaped from their control, they paid the price with their lives.”
I listen, my heart in my throat.
“This weapon caused a sickness. They tried to stop it, built massive walls around their cities to contain it.” His eyes stay unwaveringly on me as he speaks. “Their best and brightest scientists raced to find a cure. It didn’t matter. Nature has a way of moving faster than any of us. By the end, the few survivors fought one another in bloody wars for the scraps of what remained. They turned on one another and tore one another apart. You would be surprised at how quickly a society can fall and forget itself, how they can regress from a period of enlightenment into one of darkness. Thousands of years of progress lost, after they made a simple mistake: They couldn’t control what they had built. That was their fatal flaw, Talin, and one I don’t intend to make.”
The Premier then pointed out beyond the chamber and in the direction of our prison.
