Titus narrowed his eyes. He had never heard anything of the sort.
“About eighteen years ago, a new Inquisitor named Hyas was appointed to the Domain. He was young, energetic, outstandingly capable, and superbly loyal to the Lord High Commander. The Lord High Commander couldn’t have been more pleased with his performance. It seemed to everyone that Hyas was set for a long tenure.
“But three years into his appointment, he was abruptly dismissed. No one knew why—we serve at the Lord High Commander’s pleasure. His replacement, Zeuxippe, was just as skilled and loyal. She held the post for only eighteen months, her removal no less abrupt and unceremonious. After that, I was promoted.”
“For years, I remained as puzzled as everyone else concerning the events that led to my appointment. Yesterday I had an audience with the Lord High Commander. While I was in Atlantis, I called on my two predecessors and persuaded them to tell me their stories.”
Titus made no comment on her “persuasion.”
“Hyas was dismissed on charges of graft and corruption. He strenuously protested his innocence, but as some of the greatest treasures of the House of Elberon were found in his keeping, his objections fell on deaf ears. Zeuxippe’s tale was even more ignominious, if that was possible. She was accused of improper advances against the Princess Ariadne.
“It was a pernicious charge. It destroyed not only Zeuxippe’s career, but also her personal happiness: the love of her life left her after learning of the accusations. Now I am cynical—if mages were honest, there would be no need for Inquisitions. But I came away convinced of both Hyas’s and Zeuxippe’s innocence in their respective debacles. Which led me to the only conclusion possible, that Princess Ariadne was a deluded madwoman willing to do anything to make her so-called prophecies come true.”
Titus leaped off his chair. “I did not come here to listen to such drivel.”
He was furious. He could only hope his fury was sufficient to mask his dismay.
Everything—everything—rested on the accuracy of his mother’s visions. If she had been a fraud who cheated to fulfill her prophecies—he could not even follow the thought to its logical conclusion.
The Inquisitor smiled slightly. “Lady Callista also told me that when they were children, Her Highness had a vision that one day she would die at the hand of her own father.”
He blenched. His mother’s death left wounds that had yet to heal. The Inquisitor was tearing off the scabs one by one.
“The common mage believes Her Highness’s death to be the result of illness—her health had always been delicate and her passing at age twenty-seven unexpectedly early, but not implausible. You and I, however, both know that Prince Gaius, to demonstrate his desire to keep peace with Atlantis, executed Her Highness himself as a gesture of goodwill and submission. But now I wonder if Her Highness didn’t participate in the uprising with an eye toward being punished, so that she could preserve the integrity of her prophecy.”
He wanted to shout that his mother had never enjoyed her gift—that it had been a crushing burden. But did he believe it?
The Inquisitor smiled again. “I can’t help but think what you are doing now has something to do with Princess Ariadne’s wishes. Did she predict some magnificent destiny for you that would require you to risk life and liberty? Because as you said, Your Highness, you are too sensible a young man. I cannot believe you would throw away the best years of your life on your own initiative.”
His heart pounded—from more than the upheaval of the Inquisitor’s words. There was the truth serum, punishing him for not giving in to it, for not telling everything the Inquisitor wished to know. But there was something else also. Something that made him dizzy. He grabbed the back of the chair and looked at the Inquisitor.
“You should have been a playwright, Madam Inquisitor. Our theaters suffer from a shortage of sensational plots.”
Her eyes locked onto his. “Such a loyal son. Was she as loyal to you? Or did she see you as but a means to an end?”
He hardened his grip so his hands would not shake. “You ascribe far too many motives to a simple woman. My mother was neither clever nor scheming. And she was nowhere near ruthless enough to use her only child as a pawn in some grand chess match with destiny.”
“Are you sure?”
His head hurt, as if someone had scored his brain with broken glass. But nothing hurt as much as the possibility that his mother might have orphaned him to prove herself right.
Wrong. Something would hurt more: the idea that she was not yet done proving herself right, that from beyond the grave she was still manipulating Titus to justify the choices she had made in life.
“I am as sure as you are of Lady Callista’s truthfulness.”
“But you are not. I can see you are not. Her arrant disregard injures you. And why shouldn’t you be distressed and indignant? A son’s love for his mother ought not be perverted thus.”
Was that what his mother had done? Exploited and defiled his love for her not for a noble goal that was greater than their individual lives, but for the mere fixation of being right?
He had always been alone in this. And he had always struggled against his own private doubts. Now doubts and loneliness threatened to swallow him whole.
He wanted to say something. But the sensation in his head—as if the rim of his skull was liquefying. He swayed. His hands clutched tighter onto the chair.
This was how the Inquisitor operated, he dimly understood. A calm, collected mind was far more resistant to her probing, so she first destroyed her subjects’ composure. When they became distraught, she acted.
Her sobriquet among Atlanteans was the Starfish. A starfish inserted its stomach between the shells of a mussel and digested the poor bivalve in place. The Inquisitor did the same with the contents of a person’s memory: dissolving the boundaries of the poor sod’s mind, sucking all his scrambled recollections into her own, and sorting the wreckage at her leisure.
“Only fools stand in the way of Atlantis. Where is Iolanthe Seabourne?”
He would not allow her to get anything from him. He could not. If she had any suspicion he was not merely hiding Fairfax to thwart the Bane, but aimed for the Bane’s complete overthrow, Atlantis would not suffer him to live. And Fairfax—Fairfax would disappear off the face of the earth.
But he felt the beginning of the Inquisitor’s inimical surgery. Her powers sawed thick and jagged at his cranium. He tried to repel her. Tried to return himself to some measure of his usual coolness. He could not. All he could think was that his mother had done this to him.
“Where is the girl who brought down the lightning? Tell me!”
He did not realize until his nails were screaming in protest that he was clawing at the marble floors. He did not know when he had fallen down, only that he could not get up. His vision was turning black. No, it was narrowing into a tunnel. And at the very end of it was his mother, sitting on her balcony, absentmindedly stroking her canary through the bars of its cage.
The canary sang, urgently, beautifully.
Now he was truly hallucinating. Had the Inquisitor dug down deep enough to extract his memories? The pain in his head made his stomach burn.
The canary sang again.
Fairfax. It was Fairfax. They would get their hands on her within the hour, if he did not get her out of here.
But she was still free. She could do something: poke out the Inquisitor’s eyes, or empty the contents of her bowels on the Inquisitor’s head.
He laughed. But even to himself, he sounded quite deranged.
He raised his head and opened his eyes. Fairfax was right in front of him, fluttering madly.
CHAPTER