the Esar’s eldest son. Yes, I had played a significant role in information garnered during the war—but really, it wasn’t all that grisly; just asking questions and receiving answers, more quickly than if I did not have my Talent.
And as for my Talent…
That was another matter entirely. They really ought to have asked Mme. Antoinette about that. But seeing as most country lords and ladies, desperate for some taste of the urban life, did not have the opportunity to ask Antoinette for themselves, it was up to me to provide the information.
What did it mean to be a velikaia? For me, the fascinating question always was, what did it mean not to be a velikaia? It was merely a chance happening, the well water that ran like pedigree through my blood. It was only that my family had sought, through various means, to keep that blood as pure and our Talents as keen as possible. It was good business sense more than it was madness—the madness that had developed over time, and of which I, perhaps, was a product.
All it required was a little blood spilled. I couldn’t go about reading minds hither and yon; that would have been so very messy. Once blood was exchanged, however—and this was where rumors of torture, knives, scars, et cetera, came in—it was a different matter, and the mind was, to use a favorite phrase, as open as a book.
Or—I could add this to my repertoire—as linear as a hand scroll.
No doubt, Alcibiades had some terrible ritual all planned out in his mind since, for a man who displayed very little imagination, he was nevertheless prone to flights of fancy. I knew well enough what he might be envisioning. When it came time to speak with Lord Temur, he’d be at the ready, sword drawn, waiting for me to tell him to go out and kill a goat and bring its blood, along with the legs of thirteen frogs and the eyes of thirteen snakes, back to the ceremony room. But all we needed was something as simple as a needle, a pinprick at Lord Temur’s finger, and I would know what I needed to know.
Country folk were always so superstitious. At least, in Thremedon, everyone worth talking to knew exactly what I was capable of. They also knew that the most frightening Talent was that which required no fanfare at all, that which slipped unnoticed to lie beside you at night and whispered hello from the other side of the pillow.
It wasn’t mind reading. It was the art of pure compulsion—a charisma no man could refuse. Those under my influence always told me what I needed to know, and that was why I had always been so useful to the crown.
I barely even noticed the second knock on my door though I did turn at the sound of the door sliding open.
There was Alcibiades again, looking nervous and somewhat like a recalcitrant child. He might well have been about to admit to me that it was he who’d stolen the cookies, and he couldn’t live with the guilt of it any longer. I softened as I looked at him.
“Yes, my dear?”
“It really doesn’t bother you?” he said.
I blinked. “What doesn’t bother me?”
Alcibiades gestured with one enormous hand as though he were trying to grasp the words from midair. “All this,” he settled on finally. “All these tricks. It doesn’t bother you to just take what you want from him?”
I smiled thinly. “Not at all,” I replied.
That appeared to be both the wrong and the right answer, for Alcibiades was quiet and grim and gray as a bleak sunrise. Like a day in the country when all was set to rain for the next week, and not even the thrill of the hunt—a hunt I’d orchestrated to futility by rescuing all the foxes beforehand—could offer illumination in the darkness.
“We’ve all done terrible things for our country,” I said, trying to keep the blow as gentle as possible and remaining cheerful as ever, so that he wouldn’t worry. “You and I for Volstov; Lord Temur for the Ke-Han. Does it really make so much of a difference that you and he have done those things while looking your enemy in the eye, and I’ve conducted my business in the shadows?”
“I thought it did,” Alcibiades said. “Let’s just get this entire mess over and done with. How are you planning to… you know…”
“Corner him?” I asked, and Alcibiades nodded, not quite looking at me. I