“ ‘Telemachus,’ Odysseus, man of exploits, urged his son, ‘it’s wrong to marvel, carried away in wonder so to see your father here before your eyes. No other Odysseus will ever return to you. That man and I are one, the man you see … here after many hardships, endless wanderings, after twenty years I have come home to native ground at last …’ ”
THIRTY-THREE
I stayed in the king’s room until I was sure the last of the gala guests would be gone. It was almost three in the morning by the time I got back to Juliana’s room, but I didn’t find it empty.
“Hello, Miss Lawson.” The General looked relaxed, sitting on the sofa near the window as if it was completely natural for him to be there. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
“Where’s Thomas?” I demanded. If something had happened to him, surely the General had been the one behind it.
The General’s face contorted with thinly veiled anger. “That’s none of your concern.”
“Then why are you here? If you’re going to yell at me about leaving the gala without telling anybody, believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted me there,” I said. I was too exhausted to argue. He had me, he had Thomas, he even had my father, in a way. There was nothing I could do to fight him. I just wanted him to say whatever it was he’d come to say and then leave.
“That’s not why I’ve come. The queen will be furious, I expect, but it doesn’t matter—you’re going home.”
“What? Are you serious? You’re sending me home?”
No,
I thought desperately.
I couldn’t leave without seeing Thomas at least one more time and being sure that he was safe.
But I doubted the General was going to allow me that.
“I told you six days, Miss Lawson, and tomorrow is the last day. I would have thought you would be elated.”
“What about Juliana?” I demanded. “You haven’t found her yet.”
“Do you really think I don’t know where Juliana is?” the General asked. I said nothing.
“They think they’re so clever, my boys,” the General said. “They forget who trained them. To whom they owe all their skills—even Lucas. I know he turned her over to Libertas when I told him to get rid of her. I don’t even mind. She can’t tell them anything. She doesn’t
know
anything, and if she thinks they’re going to help her then she’s mistaken. They’ll hold her for leverage or ransom as long as they think she’s useful, and then they’ll find their own way to dispose of her.” He brushed his hands together. “Win-win.”
So the General didn’t know that Juliana had given Libertas the Angel Eyes map. I’d seen the look on the Shepherd’s face, and he, at least, seemed to think it was worth the price.
“Where’s Thomas?” I asked again.
The General’s face grew cloudy. “I told him not to get involved with you. I
explicitly
warned him against becoming emotionally attached. Thomas is a very brave young man, very smart, very skilled, but his heart’s soft.”
“Then why did you give him the mission?”
“I think that’s fairly obvious,” the General said. “We have no other agents whose analogs are in your life. Why do you think I adopted Thomas in the first place?”
“Because he’s Grant’s analog?” That was a risky gamble.
“One of the reasons, yes,” the General said. “It was an insurance policy, just in case we ever needed you. You have no idea how thrilling it was to find an Aurora-analog of someone in your life who could actually be molded into a KES agent.”
“I barely knew Grant back then,” I said. “Even now I don’t know him. He could’ve moved away at any time, and then what?”
“Then I would still have an exemplary soldier who was entirely indebted to me. Besides, it was very unlikely that you and Grant wouldn’t grow up together. You’d just lost your parents; your grandfather needed a job, and the university offered him one. And Grant’s mother was tenured. Of all of them, he was the best bet, and Thomas has proven to be a very good investment. Until recently, that is.”
“What have you done to him?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. Thomas is far too important an asset for me to
do
anything to him. But I couldn’t risk keeping him on Operation Starling knowing how he felt about you. He was starting to compromise the mission.” He handed me a sheaf of photographs.
“Where did you get these?” The pictures showed Thomas and me, kissing on my bed at Asthall Cottage, taken through the curtains with a long zoom lens.
“I was having you surveilled.” He shook his head. “I have to say, I’m disappointed in you. I thought you would be more excited to go home.”
“I don’t think I can be too excited until I see the strings,” I told him. “What do I have to do? Go through with the wedding?”
“There’s not going to be a wedding,” the General said. “Not if I can help it. I never intended for Juliana and Callum to
actually
get married, although I couldn’t share that with her at the time.”
“What do you mean, there’s not going to be a wedding?”
“Prince Callum is going to have a medical emergency,” the General said. “Tonight.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because you’re going to make it happen,” the General said. He reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small vial filled with an ounce of clear liquid. “He’s still awake. He’s looking for you, and when we’re finished here I’ll make sure he finds you. He’s worried. He wants to talk. I’ll have the kitchen send up a tea tray and you’ll pour him a cup. Then, when he’s not looking, you’re going to slip this into his drink and hand it to him. The solution will do the rest.”
“I can’t do that,” I told him. “I won’t kill Callum. You were probably better off keeping Juliana.”
“Oh, it won’t kill him, I assure you,” the General said.
“But it’ll make him sick!”
“Hopefully,” the General said.
“You’re insane! I’m not doing this. Callum is my friend. I’m not going to help you hurt him.”
“Actually, you are.” The General leaned forward and placed the vial on the table between us. “Because if you don’t, you will remain here in Aurora, rotting in the worst prison the Commonwealth has to offer for the rest of your natural born life.”
“Why do you even want to do this? If you don’t want him to marry Juliana, why don’t you just send him back to Farnham and end this?”
The General sighed. “I shouldn’t expect you to understand the delicate political situation we’re in. The marriage does nothing for the UCC, because we don’t want a peace treaty. We want Farnham. For two hundred years that
family
has been sitting on land that rightfully belongs to this country, and I’m going to get it back. The first step in assuring that that happens is securing our collateral. Prince Callum
is
that collateral. But I have no use for a hostage who’s well enough to be extracted. Not that I think Farnham is capable of such a maneuver, but it never hurts to be sure.”
“According to Callum, his mother practically hates him,” I said. “What makes you think she won’t blow this country to smithereens rather than cooperate with you?”
“Because as much as she may hate him, which I’m not convinced she does, her country loves him,” the General said. “If she sacrifices him for her own political reasons, they’ll revolt. Libertas will make sure they do. The queen of Farnham likes to pretend they’re simply a scourge on the UCC, but they aren’t. They operate in Farnham as well, and stirring up revolution is what they do best. She knows she’ll lose if she shows her people what a miserable tyrant she really is.”
“
She’s
a miserable tyrant? What does that make you?”
“A brilliant strategist,” the General said arrogantly. “I don’t need the love of the people; I have nuclear weapons.” He stood up. “I’ll leave you to make your choice, Miss Lawson. We have other ways of making sure this task is done, but none of them involve you going back to Earth, so I would consider my offer very, very carefully if I was you.”
He strode to the door, confident that he had been victorious over me, the naïve little girl from another world.
THIRTY-FOUR
I picked up the vial and turned it over in my hand. It was the only thing other than the tandem standing between me and Earth—home. And it was so small. Just a flick of the wrist and it would be done. Nobody would ever suspect that I had anything to do with what happened to Callum, and even if they did, by then I would be an entire universe away where no one could ever touch me.
What was my other option? Disobey the General and condemn myself to a lifetime of imprisonment in Aurora? Either way, Callum’s fate was sealed. I couldn’t save him, but I could save myself.
I struggled to get out of my dress, ripping it as I pulled it off. The beautiful rose tiara clattered to the floor. I collapsed beside it in tears, panting. After a while, I got up and threw on a pair of pants and a T-shirt, not caring one iota for how I looked.
“Juli?” Callum stood in the door, his voice full of concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, turning from him and wiping at my face. My fist closed over the vial. Somehow, I found the strength to smile. It felt unnatural, as though the muscles I needed to do it had atrophied. “I’m fine. Just overwhelmed.”
“I’ll say.” He came in and sat down on the sofa the General had just vacated. “You disappeared hours ago. I was really worried. I thought something had happened.”
I shook my head. “No, I just hate crowds. They make me nervous.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re all right.”
“I am, I promise.” An attendant entered the room, pushing a tea cart I hadn’t ordered. I nodded my thanks and he left as quickly as he had come. “Do you want some tea?”
“Uh, sure.” Callum was bewildered by my strange behavior and I couldn’t blame him. I was acting like a crazy person. I felt crazy, too. Was I really going to do this?
Poison
Callum? Turn him over to the General in exchange for my own happiness? Could I ever be happy back at home, knowing what I’d done, the destruction I’d left in my wake?
“You Columbians and your tea.” Callum smiled. “Sorry, I meant that as a joke.”
“It was funny.” With my back to Callum, I poured us each a cup of tea. Then I uncapped the vial and dumped its contents into Callum’s cup. There. It was done. I was the worst person in the world—all the worlds. But I was going home. I hoped desperately that it was worth it.
“Here you go,” I said, handing him his tea.
“Thanks.”
I took a sip from my cup, but Callum just held his, staring at me with worry in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” I insisted. “I’m fine.”
“If you say so.” Callum brought the cup to his lips. This was it. The vilest thing I’d ever done was happening right before my eyes. But did it really matter? It was inevitable anyway.
Or was it?
“Stop!” I cried.
He paused, not drinking a drop. “What’s going on, Juli? Seriously, you’re scaring me.”
I put my cup down; it clattered in its delicate saucer. “You can’t drink that. I dosed it.”
“You
what
?”
“With some sort of poison,” I told him. “The General threatened me. He told me that if I didn’t do it …” I trailed off, hoping that Callum would fill in the blanks with his own terrifying conclusions. I couldn’t tell him the full story without explaining who I was or where I’d come from. If I did that, he might never trust a single thing I told him ever again, and I needed him to trust me if I was going to keep him alive.
“You were going to kill me?” Callum recoiled, as if I was a snake. And I was. I knew I was. “Why?”
“Not kill you,” I said. “I don’t know what it does, but the General said it was going to make you so sick that nobody from Farnham could come get you.”
“That’s not better!”
“I know, I know. Please listen to me. I couldn’t do it. Doesn’t that count for something? I don’t care what happens to me, I won’t hurt you. I panicked for a second and thought I could, but I can’t. Never.”
Callum was gripping his teacup so hard I thought he might break it. “So what do I do now? I can’t stay here.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “I just don’t know how you’re going to get out.”
“We,” Callum said firmly.
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“You’re coming with me,” Callum said.
“No, I can’t.” If I left with Callum, I could kiss any chance of going home goodbye, not to mention any chance of ever seeing Thomas again. On the other hand, it didn’t look like staying would increase the chances of either of those things happening, either. What was the right thing to do? Thomas would’ve known.
Think like Thomas,
I told myself.
What would he do?
“Yes,” Callum insisted. “There’s no way I’m leaving you behind to be punished by that monster. Wherever I go, you’re coming, too. We’ll get out of here together.”
“How can you even say that, after what I did?”
“What you almost did,” Callum corrected me. “You couldn’t do it. I believe that. I might be nuts, but I still trust you, Juliana. I’m not leaving you, is that clear?”
I nodded. I wished he would stop calling me “Juli” and “Juliana.” It was a constant reminder of how many lies I’d allowed him to believe. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way out.”
“Yes, there is.” Callum slipped off his signet ring, the one he’d told me had once belonged to his father, and slammed it, with the stone facing down, onto the little table next to the sofa. Then he did something that filled me with such horror that to my dying day I will never, ever forget it.
Callum picked up his tea and drank it down.
I screamed at him to stop, but by the time the words came out of my mouth he was already setting the empty cup down on the table. He put his ring back on.
“Why did you do that?” I cried.
“Have a little faith,” he said. “Just promise to stick with me, whatever you do.”
It didn’t take long for the poison to take effect. Within a minute, Callum had gone limp and collapsed onto the sofa. I slapped his cheeks, nearly insane with panic.
“Callum! Callum, wake up!” But he didn’t stir.