"It’s okay," I told them in Mandasar. "No one’s going to get mad at you."
"York," Festina said sharply in English, "I’d be more comfortable if you kept to a language I understand."
She held her stun-pistol not quite aiming at me, not quite aiming away. (The soldiers hadn’t tried to take the gun away from her… lucky for them.) But I wasn’t half so upset by the stunner as I was by her tone of voice — so hard and icy. Festina was mad at me; really, really mad. She’d seen me turn on the anchor then smash it, and she thought I’d betrayed her. Worst of all, I could only have done that bad stuff if I was in cahoots with Prope.
I think that’s what made Festina so furious. She might forgive me if I did something careless or stupid… but not if I was the least little bit tied in with Captain Prope.
Um.
An elderly gentle shuffled out of the infirmary, so old her brown shell had darkened nearly black. Every step she took seemed an effort; she grunted as she walked, and each heaving breath turned whistly in her nose.
Now I remembered: her nose. Dr. Gashwan had always had a wicked scar running the length of her snout, as if someone once stuck a knife tip into a nostril and yanked it all the way back to her cheek. It was an ancient wound from her youth; but even in the dim lanternlight, the ugly mark was still very visible.
Beside me, Festina lifted a hand to her own face.
"Gashwan," Plebon said. He bowed, but the old woman ignored him. Instead, she shuffled past everyone till she stopped in front of me.
"Edward York," she cooed in English. "My one and only son."
Leaning forward, she nuzzled me on the lips.
38
LEARNING SOME UGLY TRUTHS
I blinked. The kiss was almost exactly like Counselor’s back on Celestia — a human gesture imitated by an alien. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak; but Festina asked the question that was on my mind. "Son? What do you mean, son?"
"He’s my child," Gashwan answered, her eyes glittering. "I made him."
"You?" said Festina. "You were the engineer?"
Gashwan lifted one of her wrinkled hands and patted my cheek fondly. If I hadn’t been so frozen with horror, I would have flinched away.
Dad had never revealed who engineered Sam and me… but it only made sense that he went to someone on Troyen. He knew people here; the doctors were the best in the galaxy; and Mandasar medical facilities could ignore stuffy Technocracy laws about gene-tinkering.
Years later, when Sam needed a doctor for Innocence and me, it probably wasn’t coincidence she’d gone straight to Gashwan.
"You’ve turned out nicely," Gashwan purred. She’d taken my chin in her hands and was tipping my head from one side to the other: examining her work. "Still perfect, aren’t you, boy?"
"I’m okay," I mumbled.
She smiled. "So much like your father when I knew him. The same look. The same attitude."
I did some quick arithmetic. My father was a hundred and twenty-one now, still hale and hearty thanks to YouthBoost. He must have been in his mid-sixties when Sam and I were whipped up in a test tube. His original mission to Troyen was thirty years before that… which must have been when he first met Gashwan. Maybe she’d been a young medical researcher, eager to learn about the human metabolism. Mandasar doctors loved to study aliens.
"Well," Gashwan said, still looking at me keenly, "I’m proud of the way you turned out. Very presentable… for a human."
"But you made a mistake on me," I told her. "I’m stupid. My brain doesn’t work right."
"Your brain works exactly according to specification," she said. "I agree, it wasn’t fair; but your father promised you’d have a fine life, brought up so you’d never know you were different. That’s the only reason I said yes when Alexander asked to make you the way you are."
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. "Dad asked you to make me… slow?"
"Oh, Edward," she chided. "Do you think I’d mess up your brain by accident?"
"But why?" I whispered.
"So you wouldn’t get in your sister’s way," Gashwan answered. "If you were smart enough to figure out how the admiral wanted to use you…" She shook her head. "You’d never have gone along. But things turned out all right, didn’t they? You’re here and you’re fine."
"But… but…"
There were no words inside my brain. No words. They’d been burned clean out of me.
No one had made a mistake. It’d all been completely deliberate. Premeditated. Carefully planned. Yet my whole life, my father had called me a disappointment: rejected me for being the way I was, when he was to blame.
It didn’t make me mad. It made me sick.
But Plebon had lifted his head. "Gashwan — you’re talking about an admiral named Alexander. Do you mean Alexander York?"
"Yes," Gashwan said, "Alexander York is Edward’s father." With a ghost of a smile, she added, "And I’m his mother."
Plebon turned to Festina. "Alexander York was the admiral who sent Willow here to Troyen. He wanted us to pick up a queen and take her to Celestia. York has some shady business deal with a group of people there, called ‘recruiters’…" Oof. I should have guessed — who else? who else? — but I was beginning to realize my greatest skill in life was denying the evil around me. My father was the one behind it alclass="underline" Willow, the recruiters, the terrible inertia of my brain.
Festina said nothing, but nodded to herself… as if she’d suspected the truth for some time.
In the silence, a distant sound drifted up through the bleak stone corridors — possibly from outside, possibly somewhere in the castle.
Hyena laughter. Cackling and crazed.
"What’s that?" Gashwan asked.
"An old friend," Festina answered grimly. "His name is Larry."
Part 5 TAKING THE CROWN
39
BECOMING AN EXPLORER
"A Laughing Larry?" Dade blurted out. "There weren’t supposed to be any…" He closed his mouth sharply.
"There weren’t supposed to be advanced weapons on Troyen?" Tobit asked. "Looks like our navy researchers weren’t the only ones who got around the Fasskister Swarm."
"Don’t jump to conclusions!" Festina snapped. "Quick," she said to Gashwan, "who’s in charge here?"
"I am," Gashwan answered.
"In charge of the whole palace? The defense?"
Gashwan nodded. "Ever since Queen Temperance left."
"Willow took the queen away," Plebon put in. "To help the recruiters on Celestia control—"
"We figured that out," Festina said, then turned back to Gashwan. "The laughing sound comes from a killing machine… maybe more than one. Your arrows are useless, and your troops will be slaughtered. Surrender now before there’s a bloodbath." Gashwan patted Festina on the arm. "Dear child, I’m not a fool. I tried to surrender as soon as Temperance abandoned us. The Black Army refused."
"They wouldn’t let you give up peacefully?"
"They ignored my broadcasts and killed my envoys. The Black Queen doesn’t want capitulation — she wants to take the palace by force."
"Who is the Black Queen?" I asked. Knowing the answer.
"Your sister, of course," Gashwan said. "She started the war, and she’s about to end it."
I wished I could go all outraged: yelling, How could you say such a thing? But no. Sam had called herself an "advisor" to the Black Queen, but my sister had always been a leader, not a follower. And she’d led Troyen straight into this war. She’d been in a perfect position to incite hostilities, using diplomacy to pump up tensions rather than ease them. The footprints at the Cryogenic Center had been just her size. And Samantha had murdered Verity before faking her own death.