He heard me beg The Triad to do more to find her, and he took pity, told me you, Carragheen, had been to see Cleedaline. That maybe you had discovered something. Even told me where she was living.”
Carragheen was silent, and I watched his face as he put the pieces together. His father’s people knew that he had told Cleedaline about Imogen’s disappearance. They knew where she lived. And then she had died. There was no point asking how. How they had known Carragheen had gone to her. Or how they had known where Cleedaline was placed, when no-one was supposed to know. Kraken was the High Priest. Everything was his to know.
“But why, Zorax?” I was still confused. “Why did you keep chasing Imogen? Why not leave it to the Council? What was it to you?”
At this, all of Zorax’s tenuous hold on his composure crumbled.
He was sobbing, great silent sobs, like an infant at the apex of a howl. My mother was standing silently, supporting him, patting his shoulders as though he was a child.
“He loves her,” she supplied for him. “They are lovers.”
“No.” I knew this wasn’t true. I’d been to Cleedaline’s apartment. I knew Cleedaline and Imogen had something special. Anyway, it was horrid. This old man, with the beautiful Imogen. And she was his student. It wasn’t right. Surely there was some code against it.
Zorax had recovered sufficiently to argue with me. “It is true,” he insisted. “We have been lovers for a year. I don’t know why she chose me. I know I’m old, and not beautiful. And I know it was not the right thing, me being The Choirmaster. But she loved me. Loves me. We love each other. There was nothing either of us could do. She does love me, you know. Just before she disappeared, she gave me this.”
He opened his palm and revealed the silver locket.
“After she disappeared, I kept it always with me. I even found a way to take it through the hydroport, using a special song. Don’t you see, I loved her so much…”
I watched him try to convince us, but he didn’t need to.
“Her voice is so beautiful, like an angel. She is the best in the whole choir, you know, the best of all those beautiful voices. The only one who even comes close is Lecanora.”
“Anyway,” I reminded him. “This is hardly the time for a who’s who of the choir. What about Cleedaline? I thought she and Imogen—”
Zorax interrupted me, shaking his head. “That’s what everyone thought. Because of the secrecy between me and Imogen, I guess, and because they were so close. And also…”
He paused, trying to find the right words.
“Because Cleedaline loved Imogen,” I supplied for him. “The way you do.”
My heart broke cleanly for Cleedaline as I said it. I saw her beautiful apartment, a shrine to the love she could not have, her life-long friend.
“Yes,” he breathed gratefully. “Yes, Rania. Imogen felt so guilty, she worried that was why Cleedaline had taken the year on the land. Because of us. And now… now she’s gone.”
Finished with his tale, Zorax broke down, leaning against Mom and sobbing quietly.
I looked over at Carragheen, and tried to imagine how Zorax felt. I could see how he was hurting, afraid for his lost Imogen. I imagined if Carragheen and I were lovers, how frantic, how delirious I would be. Whether it would twist my judgement the way it twisted Zorax’s, when he helped Kraken and deceived a nation. I hoped not, but who could be sure?
Looking at Carragheen, I could tell he did not feel as I did, sad and sorry for Zorax.
His face was hard and closed, those full lips a tight slash in his jaw.
Maybe it was the involvement of his father, another thread in a tangled web.
I was trying to think it all through, wondering whether the thing, the sound weapon that they were using, was some application, some extension of the effect that Zorax had discovered, the effect he used with the choir, and then on me.
“Did anyone else know? About the effect?”
He scratched his chin slowly. “No. Although one night I did see Kraken arguing with Epaste. It was in the beginning, when I was telling him about my experiments. Before Imogen disappeared. Kraken told me later that Epaste had been checking on him. And that he disapproved.”
Epaste the Pious, again.
“Zorax,” I said. “We need to go and find them, the girls. We think they’re alive, but hurting. You