“He led the Circle ably for many years. He can be hide-bound and intransigent on certain issues, he prefers to keep his own counsel—to the point of being secretive—and he is prickly and difficult at times—”
“In other words, a typical war mage.”
“—but overall, he’s a good man.”
“Can he win?”
Pritkin was silent for a moment. “Had you asked me that question twenty years ago, I would have said yes. But now . . . I don’t know.”
“Your best guess, then.”
“Jonas’ knowledge is certainly greater, and he has more experience. But his power has waned in recent years. Of the two, Saunders is stronger.”
“Then wouldn’t it make more sense for someone else to issue challenge?”
“Only a Council member has the right. Anyone else would be summarily dispatched by Saunders’ bodyguards. And that is assuming anyone could be found willing to take the risk. It is a duel to the death.”
I swallowed. Wonderful. “So it’s a long shot or no shot at all.”
“Essentially.”
I stared at the chimney and wished my head didn’t hurt. “Saunders will be at a reception the Senate is giving tomorrow,” I finally told him.
Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”
“Because I’ll be there, too. Mircea arranged it. The Senate has some plan to get me confirmed, only nobody’s telling me what it is. I guess they think Saunders is less likely to try something in front of them.”
“That could work,” he said thoughtfully. “If Jonas challenges there, not only will Saunders’ entourage hear it, the Senate will as well. There will be no way to refuse, and a cover-up will be impossible.”
“Yeah.” The only question was how the Senate would take having me bring a fight into the middle of their big party. Even if by some miracle this all worked out . . . I winced. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
“You think the Senate will object to having us there?” Pritkin asked, watching me.
“Us?” I raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t really think I would let you and Jonas go alone?”
“Afraid you’ll miss out on some of the crazy?” He just looked at me. “I’ll take care of the Senate,” I told him. “They want this finished as badly as we do. You just keep the Circle from trying anything.”
“Ah. The easy job, then.”
“Pritkin, haven’t you figured it out yet? We don’t get the easy jobs.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Marsden was elbow-deep in flour when we went back in, shaping homemade dough with a wooden rolling pin. “I’m making lasagna for lunch,” he told us, “if you’d like to stay?” My borrowed stomach rumbled embarrassingly despite the fact that it had just finished breakfast. I stared down at it in annoyance and Marsden laughed. “I take it that’s a yes?”
Pritkin went back upstairs for his weapons while I sat at the table and listened to Marsden’s stories about Agnes. Highly unlikely stories. “She was messing with you,” I told him. “She did
not
date Caesar.”
“I admit, I found that one a little hard to swallow—”
“She couldn’t have shifted that far back,” I explained. “It would have killed her.”
“Oh, I assure you, she could. She traveled even farther than that for us on more than one occasion.”
“I don’t see how. The farthest back I’ve gone was the sixteenth century, but that was in spirit. I don’t know if I could make it that far with my body.”
The rolling pin hit the table top as loudly as a gavel. “You’ve gone back in time
with your body
?” He looked outraged.
“Uh, yeah?”
“For what possible reason?”
“Because I can’t stay anywhere long enough to get anything done when I’m in spirit form. I’m like a ghost with nothing to haunt—my energy gives out after a few hours and I have to shift back. Not to mention that trying to do anything without a body is really—”
“But you can have your pick of bodies! You’re Pythia. You can possess anyone you choose! That is the reason you have that power, to make time shifting less perilous!”
I didn’t reply, but I thought about Agnes’ shoulder wound. It seemed like she hadn’t told Marsden everything. She probably hadn’t wanted to worry him, but obviously she’d taken her body along from time to time. Maybe there were missions where possessing someone was just too dangerous. Getting the person she was possessing shot might screw up the very time line she was trying to fix. Or maybe she hadn’t liked possessions any more than I did.
“And how do you know that, Jonas?” Pritkin demanded from the stairway, his old coat draped over his arm.
“Lady Phemonoe mentioned it,” Marsden said, grabbing a knife and cutting board and laying into some onions.
“Odd that she never told anyone else,” Pritkin said, handing me his boots. I took them gratefully. Summer in Britain was a lot different than July in Nevada, and my toes were cold.
Marsden looked a little shifty. “Yes, well, we worked together a long time and . . . she trusted me.”
Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “Enough to spill age-old secrets?” “We didn’t have in-depth discussions. It was just a . . . a slip of the tongue, here and there.”
“A slip of the tongue?” Pritkin repeated, and something about the way he said it made Marsden go all pink.
“John!”
“Jonas, are you blushing?”
“It’s hot in here!” Marsden said testily. “You might have installed some proper ventilation.” He’d opened a window, but most of the fragrant steam had chosen to hang around.
“That’s a bit tricky with stone walls,” Pritkin said dryly. “And you’re evading the issue.”
Marsden glanced at me. “Do you know, I think I need more basil. Cassie, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Oh, I’d mind,” I said, planting elbows on the table and looking at him expectantly.
He sighed and added the onions to a pot on the stove, showing us his back in the process. “She was . . . we were . . . good friends, as well as colleagues.”
Again, it wasn’t so much what was said, as how he said it. “Wow.” I was impressed. “You
and
Caesar—”
Marsden threw some mushrooms in a colander a little harder than necessary. “Yes. Well. As you say. But that isn’t the point, is it? The point is that you’ve been doing it wrong, child.”
“Yeah. Imagine that. And with all of thirty seconds’ training, too.”
“You’re fortunate to still be alive!” he said sternly. “Do you have any idea how many diseases you could have encountered in the past? How many times you might have eaten foods that, while perfectly safe for the people of the time, would be deadly to you? And that is assuming the dark mage you are chasing doesn’t kill you first!”
“Does that happen a lot?” I asked nervously. “Mages slipping through time?”
“It takes an extraordinary amount of power, and few are able to raise or to control so much. Most who try end up dead long before you need to worry about them. Leaving you free to deal with other responsibilities.”
“Such as?”
Marsden went ninja on some garlic. “Any number of things. We’ve already discussed the petitioners who will expect you to see the future for them and give advice.”
“Seeing the future is . . . problematic.”
“Nonetheless, people will want you to try. Along with presiding over the Pythian Court and supervising the initiates, it is a Pythia’s primary duty.”
“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but the Pythian Court is what, exactly?”
“A court of mediation for high-level disputes among the supernatural community. For example, if the Clan Council of the Weres were to have a dispute with the vampire Senate that they could not work out themselves, they might bring it to you in an effort to avoid bloodshed. The Pythia can best judge these cases because she alone can see how the dispute will end if it is not resolved.”
I swallowed. Great. Something else I didn’t know how to do. Not that it made a difference in this case. Half the supernatural community wanted me dead and the other half thought I was their little pawn. Neither group was going to listen to a damn thing I had to say.
As for the initiates, I couldn’t imagine a scenario that would have me seeking them out. Myra had been bad enough; I didn’t need a whole court waiting for me to kick off. Or trying to help me do so.
I looked up to see Marsden staring at me suspiciously. “Please tell me this isn’t the first you’ve heard of all this,” he said.
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
His knife thwacked into the cutting board hard enough to wedge there. He left it, glaring at Pritkin. “You should have brought her to me before this! She needs training!”
“I might have, if you had mentioned you could provide it.”
“I would have, if
you
had mentioned that you were running about with the new Pythia! You used to keep me informed about such trifles!”
“Wait a minute.” I grabbed Marsden’s wrist, to keep him from trying to chop something else. “You can train me?”
“Not as Agnes could have, no. I can tell you what I saw and observed over a period of decades, but I don’t have your power. I can’t help you with things like possessions.”
“I hate possessions.”
“You seem to be holding up to this one fairly well.”
“This is a body swap, not a possession.”
“Semantics,” he said offhand.
“No. It really isn’t,” I said flatly. “There’s no one else inside my head and no one is getting hurt.”
Marsden looked at me impatiently. “I’m sorry if you find the idea distasteful, but we’re talking about your life!”
“No, we’re talking about someone else’s.”
“This is exactly why you need training. The other initiates don’t question the necessity for occasional unpleasant acts.”
Yeah, I bet they didn’t. The Circle liked to get them young and brainwash them from childhood. They’d probably walk into a fire if the Circle told them to and never even question it. But that wasn’t my style. And if Marsden and I were going to work together, he had to understand that.
“I don’t have the right to steal part of someone’s life, put them in danger to protect myself and possibly traumatize them forever in the process,” I told him quietly.
“That’s overstating the issue,” he said stubbornly. “And it’s for the common good.”
“Which makes perfect sense, unless you’re the one getting screwed over for everyone else’s good.”
“It is not up to you to revise a system when you don’t even know what it is!”
“But Apollo does know,” Pritkin pointed out. He’d stayed quiet during our discussion, seated at a small table near the wall, systematically cleaning his weapons. But he’d apparently kept up, because his voice had a definite edge. “He’ll be prepared for the status quo and have a plan of action for any move we make based on it. If we hope to best him, we must learn to think in new and different ways.”
“Stay out of this, John!” Marsden snapped.
“Why?” I asked. “He’s right.”
Marsden looked at me in exasperation. “The rules are there for your protection—”
“They didn’t protect Agnes.”
For the first time, Marsden looked genuinely angry. I guess he wasn’t used to people talking back to him. “She was poisoned because of the Circle’s negligence! Of all the reasons I have to despise Saunders, that is by far the greatest! As long as I remained in office, she was properly guarded. As you will be once I return.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. His muscles were knotted with strain, with grief. He misses her, I realized. He wanted to honor her memory by helping to fulfill her last wish—that I succeed her. But he wanted to do it on his terms.
I exchanged glances with Pritkin. “About that . . . ,” I said.
“It’s perfect!” Marsden announced when I’d finished explaining the plan. “Better than I dared to hope for!”
“Don’t get too excited,” I told him. “We don’t have a deal yet. I can get you in, but I want a little more than confirmation in return.”
“Namely?” The old man’s expression didn’t change, but his usually bleary blue eyes suddenly looked a lot sharper.
“There are some schools the Circle has been running. I want them closed. Permanently.”
His forehead creased. “What schools?”
“The ones for kids with malfunctioning magic. The Circle has been locking people away for years who haven’t done anything wrong, and that’s including when you were in office. It has to stop.”
Marsden was shaking his head before I even finished. “The schools you mention are an unfortunate necessity. I don’t like them, either, but there simply is no other choice. We don’t lock away the harmless sort, but some of those children have very dangerous gifts!”
“There has to be a better solution.”
“If so, we’ve never found it. Unsupervised, they are a danger to themselves and everyone around them.” It sounded final.
“How many have you met?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a simple question. How many of them have you met? Because I’ve had nine hanging out at Dante’s for a week now and the place has yet to burn down or blow up or suffer anything worse than elevators with doors that won’t shut!”
“Then you’ve been very fortunate.” His tone was dismissive, as if I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about.
“I also lived with a group of them for almost two years when I was a teenager. I’m not saying we never had a problem, but no one killed anyone or burned down any buildings. And the neighbors never noticed enough unusual stuff to bother calling the cops.”
“Forgive me, Cassie, but I find that very difficult to believe.” He sounded patient, and it pissed me off. I wasn’t the one being stubborn here.
“Like I said, how many of them have you ever known?”
“None. However—”
“Don’t you think it’s time you met some?”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Perhaps. But you understand that I cannot promise you anything? To take such a step, the Council would have to approve, and while I once had a good deal of sway over that group, that is no longer true.”