“Sacrilege!” the taller acolyte hissed from the bottom of the stairs. “No one can lay hands on the Holy Father!”
“If you value that hypocrite, get him out of my Keep right now.”
The acolyte scrambled up the steps to assist the Holy Father. Kelsea turned back to her armchair, determined to ignore them, but then she heard gasping breaths below her, behind the wall of guards.
“Father, are you all right?”
“Fine, Majesty.”
But Father Tyler’s voice was hoarse with pain.
“Stay there. We’ll get you a doctor.”
“Tyler will come with us!” the Holy Father snarled. But Mace had already pushed his way down the steps and positioned himself between Father Tyler and the priests.
“The Queen says he stays.”
“My own doctors will attend him.”
“I think not, Your Holiness. I’ve seen the work of your doctors.”
The Holy Father’s eyes widened, full of surprise and something else … guilt? Before Kelsea could decipher his reaction, Mace sprang across the room and laid hold of the taller acolyte, grabbing him by the neck. “We’ll be keeping this one as well. Brother Matthew, is it?”
“On what charge?” the Holy Father demanded, enraged.
“Treason,” Mace announced flatly. “The Thorne conspiracy.”
The Holy Father’s mouth worked for a moment. “We came here under promise of safe conduct!”
“I promised safe conduct to you, Your Holiness,” Kelsea snapped, though inwardly she cursed Mace; he never told her anything. Now she placed Brother Matthew easily: one of the men from the Argive, crouched around Thorne’s campfire in the middle of the night. “You’re free to go. But your toadies came at their own risk.”
“I suggest you leave now,” Mace told the Holy Father, tightening his grip on the struggling priest’s neck. “Before I have a chance to ask your weasel any questions.”
The Holy Father’s eyes narrowed, and he kicked the shorter acolyte, who was still unconscious on the floor. “You! Wake up! We’re leaving!”
Somehow or other, they got the young man to unsteady feet. Mace handed Brother Matthew off to Elston and followed the two Arvath men to the doors. The second acolyte, his face white as milk, cast several appalled glances over his shoulder, but the Holy Father, walking stiffly at his side, never looked back.
Kelsea hurried down the stairs to crouch beside Father Tyler, whose left leg was twisted at a dreadful angle. He was breathing in shallow pants, enormous beads of sweat rolling down his pale cheeks. Kelsea gathered the hem of her dress to wipe his forehead, but when Coryn tried to examine the leg, Father Tyler groaned and begged him to stop.
“Broken in multiple places, Lady. We’re going to have to put him out to reset the bone.”
“We’ll wait for the doctor,” Kelsea ordered, casting a murderous glance toward the Holy Father’s retreating back. “God’s good work, I suppose.”
Father Tyler giggled, a wild, disconnected sound. “I got off light, Majesty. Seth will tell you so.”
“Who’s Seth?”
But Father Tyler gritted his teeth, and although Kelsea asked her question several more times before the doctor arrived, he refused to answer.
C
HAPTER
5
D
ORIAN
The success of a great human migration depends on many individual pieces falling into place. There must be discontent with an unpleasant, perhaps even intolerable status quo. There must be idealism to drive the movement, a powerful vision of a better life beyond the horizon. There must be great courage in the face of terrible odds. But most of all, every migration needs its leader, the indispensable charismatic figure whom even terrified men and women will follow headlong into the abyss.
The British-American Crossing met this final requirement in spades.
—The Blue Horizon of the Tear, GLEE DELAMERE
LILY WAS SITTING in the backyard, struggling to record a message to her mother. The day was too hot; something must have gone wrong with the climate control. That happened more and more often lately. Greg said it was the separatists and their hackers, sabotaging the satellites; the military men he dealt with at the Pentagon had been complaining about it for weeks. Over the past few days, the temperature in New Canaan had climbed into the high nineties, and now heavy wet air blanketed the backyard.
Weather aside, this had been a good week. Greg had gone on a business trip to Boston, some sort of convention with other players in the military. Lily always pictured these meetings as a larger version of the parties they held at their house: drunken men, their voices growing louder and hoarser as more and more liquor poured forth.
Still, she was grateful. When Greg was gone, she could almost pretend that this was her house, that she needed account to no one for her day. There was no need to hide in the nursery; Lily could move freely around the house. But tonight Greg would be coming home, and Lily was trying to snatch the last few hours to record her letter. It was hard to make her lies sound natural, particularly for Mom, who didn’t want to hear about anything unpleasant. Lily had just hit record again when a woman toppled over the back wall into the garden.
Lily looked up, startled. The woman rolled down the wall, a hissing sound following her descent as she scraped against the ivy that clung there. She ended up buried in the patch of hydrangea bushes, disappearing from sight with a low, wounded grunt.
Jonathan materialized from the kitchen doorway, his gun drawn. “Stay back, Mrs. M.”
Lily ignored him, got up from her Adirondack, and tiptoed over to the stone wall. The intruder had flattened the hydrangea bush. Lily felt Jonathan’s restraining hand on her arm, but she peered over the jagged edges of the bush until she found the woman who lay there.
She looks like Maddy!
The woman did look remarkably like Lily’s younger sister. Her hair, now tangled in the bush, hadn’t been washed in some time, but it was the same dirty blonde, even the same springy texture. She had Maddy’s snub nose, her freckles. She was a few years too young; Lily bit her lip, trying to remember how old her sister would have been now. Two years younger than Lily, so twenty-three. This girl couldn’t be more than eighteen.
Now Lily heard sirens, their wails muted by the thick stone wall. Security hardly ever used sirens in New Canaan; on the rare occasion when they came into Lily’s neighborhood, it was a quiet, efficient business. But this woman clearly didn’t belong in New Canaan. Her face was streaked with some kind of grease, and she wore jeans and a torn sweater that looked about three sizes too large. The edges of the sweater were bloody. Lily peered more closely, then drew back with a hiss. “She’s been shot!”
“Go on inside, Mrs. M. I’ll call Security.”
The woman opened her eyes. They shone, bright green and remarkably clear, too old for adolescence, before they slipped closed again. The woman breathed in shallow pants, her hand clamped against the bloody patch on her stomach. She seemed too young to even contemplate crime, and she looked so much like Maddy, Maddy who had disappeared years before.
“You’re injured,” Lily told her. “You need a hospital.”
“No hospital.”
“She’s a trespasser!” Jonathan hissed.
The sirens were louder now, perhaps as close as Willow Street. The woman opened her eyes again, and in them Lily saw resignation, a tired sort of acceptance. Maddy had looked that way when they came for her, as if she were already imagining what came next. Lily didn’t want to think about that day, about Maddy. Jonathan was right; they should call Security. But Maddy was upon Lily now, and she found herself unable to do it, unable to turn the woman in.