I winced slightly. Some of the bodies that had been found were people who had died because of me. Raffmir had been particularly ruthless with the medical staff, and my own hands were hardly clean. I had the sudden flashback of a man in military uniform crawling backwards away from me after he'd tried to blow my head off with a shotgun. The fear in his eyes as my hands closed around his throat would never leave me.
I shook my head, trying to clear the image. "You're saying that these incidents are being caused by the escapees from Porton Down — they are doing these things?"
"I'm simply pointing out the correlation between the traits documented in these files and recent incidents in the press. Secretary Carler has requested our cooperation in tidying up the loose ends. He's dealing with the official inquiry. We're dealing with the escaped inmates. These… stories are an embarrassment for all of us. The courts ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen. I want you on it before it gets out of hand."
"It looks like it's already out of hand."
"Quite."
"What do I do with them if I find them?"
"Bring them in. It's better for them if they come to us. They can join the courts, gain some protection. We'll find a place for them. They can be with people of their own kind."
"And if they don't want to?"
"We're not really offering them a choice, Niall. It's for their own protection."
"But if they won't come?"
"Persuade them."
"And if they won't be persuaded?"
"What do you want, Niall? A signed warrant? You're a Warder. Act like one."
"You want me to eliminate them?"
"If you choose to put it that way. Bear in mind that seventeen people are already dead, and there may be more we don't know about. What did you think they were going to do, blend in with the community?"
"I couldn't leave them there. They were being systematically tortured."
"And torture victims make such good citizens, don't you find? Alex is barely holding it together, and she's had help."
"You said she was improving."
"She is." Garvin stared at me. "You let these people loose, and you need to take responsibility for them. We can't leave them at large. If they come into the courts then all well and good. We can help them, give them support, keep them safe."
"And if not?"
He pushed the pile of folders across the desk. "I'm giving you Warder's Discretion. It's your call. Deal with them."
I left Garvin's office feeling resentful. Why was it my problem? It was hardly my fault that the people at Porton Down had been running secret experiments with half-breed mongrel fey as their subjects, was it?
Subjects? Victims would be a better word. What had been done in the name of science was obscene. They had stuck needles in them, drugged them, tortured them and made them perform like circus freaks, all in the name of research.
Wasn't anyone else going to take any responsibility?
Of course, I already knew the answer to that. I could tell Garvin that I didn't feel capable of fulfilling the mission and he would shake his head and assign someone else? Amber probably. She would finish the job that Porton Down had started and kill them all, quickly, efficiently and without attracting attention. I ought to be grateful that Garvin was giving me a chance to find a better solution, but I didn't feel grateful. I felt manipulated.
I mounted the stairs two at a time — the injuries I'd sustained breaking out of Porton Down had almost completely healed. I still felt a twinge or two in my shoulder where I had caught the edge of a shotgun blast, but only when I was duelling with whichever Warder Garvin chose to partner me with at our morning practice sessions, and even the twinge would soon pass — a benefit of my fey blood.
Walking through the doors to the corridor on which Blackbird and I shared a suite of rooms, I entered quietly in case she was asleep, not that I often found her sleeping during the day, but since she was the one managing the feeds in the middle of the night I thought it would be unkind to wake her if she had finally managed to grab some rest.
I needn't have worried.
The curtains were drawn back and there were sounds of splashing coming from the bathroom. I left the files on the desk and peeped around the door. She had filled the small baby bath in the big bath and was in the process of introducing our son to the warm water. From the noises he was making, he was enjoying it, though that may have been because of the kicking and splashing. Having no wish to end up damp and smelling of baby bath, I eased the door closed and crept out to check on Alex.
Crossing back across the hallway above the stairs, I made my way the far end of the wing where Alex's room was. The size of the house no longer daunted me — I had become used to corridors with room after room set aside for visitors that never arrived. It did mean that Alex could be well away from most of the rest of the occupants of the house — limiting the amount of damage and disruption to the plumbing for the rest of us.
My daughter's affinity with water was both a relief and a problem. I had been worried that she would inherit my gift for the void, or at least the female form of it, and be able to feed from living things by spreading a corruption known as darkspore. It had prevented me from telling her about her potential to inherit my fey genes until it was too late. Instead she'd discovered her gift for herself with disastrous consequences, drowning three other girls after an incident of bullying. She had lost control then, and was still struggling to regain it now.
Instead of the void, Alex had inherited her affinity with water — she called it a sympathy, I never quite understood why. I did ask her once and she told me she felt sorry for it. She said it always wanted to be somewhere else, that it never rested, leaving me wondering whether she was still talking about the water.
I came to her room at the end of the west wing and knocked on her door. There was no answer. I knocked again and waited. There had been time when I would have simply entered, but having walked in on her naked one day — now I waited. No amount of "I've seen it all before" made any difference, apparently.
Having waited again with no answer, I decided it was worth risking the door. I opened it slowly.
"Alex, are you in?"
The door opened onto a large bedroom, the double bed higher than usual and the furniture in dark polished wood that reflected the daylight from the big French doors in a dull auburn gleam. The French doors were open and I could see Alex leaning on the stone balustrade overlooking the gardens below. Fionh was with her, so I approached slowly, not wanting to startle her. Fionh noticed me and held up a hand in caution.
"Gently now, Alex," she said. "Let it find its own way."
I edged towards the French doors to see what she was doing. Alex had her arms folded on the rail and was staring intently down into the garden. At my approach, a floorboard creaked underneath me and Alex glanced back momentarily. There was a gurgling whoosh from the garden below.
"Oh, now look what you've done," said Alex. She threw her arms up and turned her back on the garden, resting her back against the balustrade and looking annoyed at me.
"What did I do?" I looked at Fionh, who smiled thinly.
"The pond will take hours to settle now, won't it Fionh?" Alex sounded oddly pleased. Fionh raised an eyebrow.
I moved onto the balcony and looked down onto the garden below. In the centre was a circular pond, water roiling with sediment.
"That was your fault. If you hadn't distracted me, I wouldn't have disturbed all the mud at the bottom," said Alex.
Fionh shook her head in resignation. "OK, enough for today. But I want five fish on the surface tomorrow."
"Five?"
"They're only fish, Alex."
"Yeah, but they go all over the place. They've got minds of their own, right?"