“What about after that?” Luna asked. “I mean, it’s not like the Council runs social services, is it?”
Variam shrugged. “Dunno.”
A small figure dressed in white had fallen behind the rest of the slaves. As I looked more closely, I saw it was the little girl from the bedroom. She was moving haltingly and kept turning to stare back at the building behind. A security man was standing over her, trying to get her moving, and from his body language he seemed to be getting frustrated. When she didn’t react he grabbed her by the upper arm and started dragging her.
There was a commotion and a short, heavyset figure came stalking out into view. As he came into the light I saw that it was Slate. He snapped something at the security man, who let go of the girl. Slate said something, his voice harsh, then pointed back in the direction of the house. The security man backed off quickly; Slate watched him go, then crouched down next to the girl. His back was to us, but there was something oddly protective about his stance.
“They’re just going to put them out on the street, aren’t they?” Luna said. She was looking towards the main body of the group.
“I don’t know,” I said, watching Slate. “Maybe they’ll have a little help after all.”
Slate stood up, guiding the girl gently with one arm. As he looked up he saw me and the scowl returned to his face. I looked away, careful not to smile.
Movement in the futures caught my attention. A Keeper was headed towards me; it was Slate’s partner, Trask. “Verus,” Trask said as he walked up.
“Hey.”
“Wards are down,” Trask said. “Going to need you to come back to HQ.”
“Oh, right,” I said with a sigh. “That.” I was still wanted for questioning. “So am I under arrest?”
“Not technically.”
“Seems to be a habit.” I climbed wearily to my feet. “Come on then.”
“Alex?” Luna asked.
“I’ll be okay. Make sure he gets to Anne.”
“Hey,” Variam said. “I can take care of myself.”
“I will,” Luna said.
I walked with Trask towards the gate point, leaving Luna and Variam alone on the hill. Getting out of here was probably a good idea anyway. Right now everyone was running around trying to get things back in order; once they managed that, they were going to start looking for people to blame. There was going to be a lot of fallout from what had happened here tonight, and I was pretty sure I’d just made some extra enemies.
Then I glanced over at the teenagers and children in the meadow. Slate was still with them, along with a couple of other Keepers. As I watched, a gate opened, and the White Rose slaves started to file through. One boy who reminded me a little of Leo had stopped and was staring back at the building behind him. As we passed by, he turned and stepped through the gate, disappearing from the meadow and leaving White Rose behind.
I turned back to see that Trask was watching me. “Worth it?” he asked.
I considered it briefly, then nodded. “Yeah.”
The two of us walked away.
The next few days were busy.
I spent the first forty-eight hours in meetings and interviews. All the different Council factions wanted to hear the details of how my trip with Haken had gone, and all of them also wanted to make sure I reported said details in such a way that would work to their advantage. Before the first day was out, I’d been threatened with death, imprisonment, exile, and demotion (not necessarily in that order), and had been instructed by five separate people to follow four different and contradictory stories. There was no possible way that I could make everyone happy, and I didn’t even try. I just stalled, and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. As the days went by, the mages in the Council had their attention pulled away from me to the political crisis unfolding around them. Now that White Rose’s organisation was in ruins, all the dirty laundry was coming out. The really secure files had been kept on keyed data focuses or in the heads of Vihaela and Marannis, but as with any security system, the weakest part is the human element, and with the number of prisoners the Keepers had taken, they had a lot of witnesses to interrogate. Some Council members tried to make covert attempts to shut the interrogations down. It didn’t work. Within a week, everyone knew who White Rose had been in bed with, with more juicy details coming out every day.
Oddly enough, being in Keeper custody ended up working out in my favour. No one was really interested in prosecuting me anymore, and being held in Keeper HQ ended up isolating me from the worst of the political storm. The only drawback was that it was hard for me to find out what was going on, but in that regard I got help from an unexpected source. Caldera was still off on medical leave, but Coatl started showing up to bring me meals and escort me around—for some reason he’d taken a liking to me, and through him I learnt what was happening in the Council as the political casualties started to mount up.
Nirvathis was one of the first to go. I never did learn exactly how he’d been associated with White Rose and what his apprentice had been doing meeting with Chamois that night, but it didn’t matter; he was never going to have a shot at the Council again. One member of the Junior Council and one member of the Senior Council both resigned four days after the battle, within an hour of each other, for “health reasons.” Along with the one Nirvathis had been gunning for, that left a total of three Council seats up for grabs. It was announced that the new Junior Council seats would be assigned first, and a political free-for-all began.
On the Dark side of the fence, Marannis found himself out in the cold. Vihaela had disappeared, the Council factions who’d lost influence were hungry for blood, and Marannis was the obvious scapegoat. He probably could have escaped if he’d been willing to cut his losses, but he hesitated too long. The Order of the Star raided his mansion while he was still trying to piece the White Rose organisation back together. Marannis was killed “resisting arrest.” Apparently someone on the Council had decided that they were tired of cleaning up White Rose’s mess.
With Marannis and Vihaela gone and their main base destroyed, White Rose disintegrated. The houses operated by White Rose were closed down and the slaves and enforcers taken into custody, and the last remaining mages involved in running the organisation slipped away.
And by the time I was finally released from Keeper HQ, everyone was far too busy with all the political chaos to pay any attention to me.
“I still don’t understand what Vihaela was doing,” Luna said.
It was a week after the battle and I was back in the War Rooms, sitting in the same alcove in the Belfry where Haken and I had waited to be summoned. Murmurs of conversation echoed across the polished floor, mages and their assistants speaking quietly as they walked. I’d been ordered to attend another hearing—a less important one this time—and I’d taken advantage of my newly acquired status as a Keeper employee to bring Luna along.
“You remember what we were saying about the three factions?” I said. There was no one very close to us, but I kept my voice down all the same. “White Rose, Levistus’s group on the Council, and whoever hired Chamois. Vihaela wasn’t on White Rose’s side.”
“But she was working for White Rose.”
“Yeah, well, once the Keepers started digging, they found some new information,” I said. “Turns out Vihaela was running the organisation a bit too well. Well enough that Marannis wasn’t necessary anymore.”
“So Marannis thought she was going to betray him?”
“He might have been right at that. I had a look at Vihaela’s history. Her bosses tend not to live very long.”
Luna thought about it for a second. “So he decided to get rid of her, but she found out and beat him to the punch.”
“That’s what the Keepers think,” I said. “We know that she sent Leo to deliver the focus. Well, my guess is that she also leaked the time and place of the meeting. That was how Chamois knew where to find them.”