Lies and Prophecy (32 page)

“If you want to,” I said neutrally. Curiosity was eating me alive, but I didn't want to push it.

He looked off into the distance. “I think you need to hear it. This … may help explain some things. Some of my reactions to things.”

I thought of the hints I'd picked up from his mind during the healing and the fury that followed. Some of that, I knew, was from his captivity with the Unseelie, but the root of it was far older. I wondered if that was one of the “reactions” he planned on explaining.

Kinfield was a pleasant haven from the frost outside, and for a little bit we were occupied with taking off coats and hats and gloves, shaking life back into cold fingers—at least I was. Julian, as usual, was wearing far less, and never seemed bothered by it. He put hot chocolate on to heat, stealing from Robert's stash, but it was more for my benefit than his own.

Finally Julian dragged a chair up to the futon and folded himself into it. I waited patiently. He studied his mug for a moment, hands wrapped around its base, before giving a short half-laugh. “Where to begin.”

“You could try the beginning,” I said, trying to defuse some of his tension.

Julian smiled wryly and leaned back. “All right. The beginning. I suppose that would be soon after I was born.”

That was rather more of a beginning than I'd had in mind, but I bit down on the urge to say it.

“What do you do with an infant who has psychic powers?” Julian asked by way of an opening. “You can't teach him control. He isn't old enough to even understand the concept, much less master it. And you can't let him loose with his gifts either. So you're left with one option: take them away from him.”

He took a quick sip of the hot chocolate and grimaced. I doubted it was from the taste. “I understand it, but that doesn't mean I like the answer. They shield the infants so thoroughly they might as well be baseline. And they leave them that way for a very long time.”

I tucked my arms in tighter against my body, trying to warm the cold spot in my stomach.

“I could tell something was missing,” Julian said, his gaze distant. “You always know; it's like you should have an arm, but there's nothing there, and it's confusing at first. Then you learn someone took that arm away from you, because you didn't know how to control it. And they promise to give it back to you, but first you have to prove you can be trusted with it. And every time you fail, they take it away again, as punishment. They call it ‘stripping.' We do too, around them, but to us it's always ‘gutting.'”

“They can
do
that to you?” I whispered.

“Oh yes. It's not easy to do, but it can be done. And they're permitted, if that's what you're asking. For safety—ours, and everybody else's. I told you, it makes sense.”

Maybe—but I didn't blame him for not liking it. “So that's what set you off. With the Unseelie, and in the hospital.”

Julian's eyes were like grey ice. I was grateful they weren't directed at me right now. “Yes. I don't remember it very clearly, but I remember enough. More than I want to. Shielding me, blocking me from using my gifts, is … a very good way to upset me.”

Which was the biggest understatement I'd ever heard out of him. He would've leveled the hospital if he could.

“You should know, though—Grayson is a better person than you think she is. More compassionate.” Julian ran his fingers slowly through his hair, apparently searching for a way to explain. “Let me back up. I told you it wasn't easy for me to convince the powers that be to let me come here, right?”

“Right.”

“They had reasons for opposing it, reasons beyond the obvious ones. If I came here,
I was out of their control.
”

I blinked. “I somehow don't think you just mean they're fanatical about your education.”

“They are, but you're right. I'm talking about the shield. They set up the structures for it when we're infants. Plant them in our minds, deep, where we can't get at them. And they have the only keys. It's far quicker and much more reliable than shielding someone the ordinary way; all they have to do is trigger the appropriate point, and no more gift. Until they choose to give it back.”

He wasn't talking about the past anymore, about childhood. He meant
now.
My body stiffened. “That's barbaric!”

“It's necessary.” Julian's voice was iron-hard. “It isn't easy to shield a wilder, not if you can't monitor it every second. They have to have something like this, something they can trigger and then leave alone. But if I came here, what could they do? So they gave the key to the Dean. And they let me know she has it. If I misbehave, or seem like a threat, she has carte blanche to gut me until someone can come investigate.”

Outrage almost choked off my voice. “But—you're an
adult.
”

“And I consented. It's one of the conditions of my presence here. Welton wouldn't take me, and the government wouldn't pay my way, unless I agreed.” Julian's knuckles whitened around the mug. “The Dean gave the key to Grayson when this mess started.”

“Did she—”

“No. She could have. Maybe even should have. When I was in the hospital … by all rights she ought to have triggered the shield and called someone in. It would have been safer for everybody. But she didn't. She knew that gutting me right then would probably have driven me mad. I was close to it, already. And since she can't take the damn thing down, it would have been days before someone came to free me. That would've destroyed me. So she trusted you, and dropped the shields.”

That night was burned vividly into my memory, but until now I hadn't understood all its implications. I'd walked a finer line than I realized. And somehow, by the grace of the gods—or maybe by just sheer dumb luck—we'd come out all right.

But that didn't make the basic situation any less horrific. “So wilders are slaves.”

“No, we're not,” Julian said, with a touch of impatience. “The government's our legal guardian; it doesn't own us.”

“Right—it only owns your gifts.”

“Do you allow children to handle guns? Of course not. And gifts are just as dangerous as guns, but inborn. They have to find
some
way to keep us and other people safe. Kim, I know what you're thinking,” Julian said, laying aside his nearly-untouched drink, as if he was afraid he would spill it. Or fling it across the room. “I feel the same way; I told you that. But consider the situation. Do you see another workable answer?”

“No,” I muttered, not looking at him. That didn't mean there
wasn't
one.

Julian glanced over to a clock, with the air of someone looking for a reason to change the subject. “We should go to dinner. Liesel and Robert will be waiting for us.” He started to rise, then hesitated. “There is one more thing.”

After the things he'd already dropped on me, I was afraid to know what he'd left for last, but I nodded for him to continue.

“I'm afraid the Unseelie might be planning something for wilders. They can't make me one of them, but that doesn't mean they won't find a way to use me.”

The cold lump was back, and stronger. I swallowed hard.

“If that happens … I want you to trigger the shield.”

I was on my feet before I realized it. “No.”

“Kim, listen to me,” Julian said harshly. “
I don't want to live like that.
I don't want to know I'm being used as their weapon. The shield is all but hard-wired into me; I don't think even the Unseelie can take it apart. Not without time to study it. They can try to get the key to unlock it from someone, but nobody here has it, and the delay will buy enough time for someone to get to me.”

“To do what?”

“To kill me.”

“
Julian!
”

“If it's necessary, so be it.” His words were colder than the snow outside, and chilled me a thousand times more. “I
won't
be their tool. They tried it once, and I won't go through that again.”

I sagged back onto the futon, staring at him. He was serious. I had guessed at Julian's ruthlessness before, made jokes about a martyr complex, but I never thought he'd say this. I couldn't do it to him. I couldn't.

Even if he asked me to?

“I can give you the key,” he said steadily. “They don't give us the one to unlock it, but they do tell us how to trigger it. Just in case. I don't know any wilder who's ever had a reason to use it, but we all know what it is.”

“Julian, I can't do this. I can't destroy you like that.”

“Please,” he said, the word coming out thin and tight. “
Please.
You don't know what it's like, Kim. Being in their control … I'd rather die.”

I stared at him, trying not to cry. This wasn't supposed to happen to people like me. Soldiers in the field had to give the
coup de grace
to their wounded comrades; college students shouldn't have to. Shouldn't be asked to.

But I knew what he meant—or at least, I could imagine it, however imperfectly. What the Unseelie wanted was enslavement of the soul. If I were in that position, and I couldn't be freed … my mind rebelled against the thought, refusing to accept the possibility that Julian couldn't be saved. That
I
couldn't be saved, if I were their captive. Their slave. But if it were true….

Then I would want the same.

Slowly, trembling, I bent my head.

Julian's fingertips were cool against my temples. Agitation had heated me, but his body seemed unaffected. I had just enough time to register that before the knowledge slipped into my mind, quickly, painlessly, and then Julian took his hands away.

I wiped my eyes with one sleeve. “You damn well better not let yourself get caught.”

“I'm not planning on it,” he whispered, and that was all either of us could say.

My fears for myself were all but forgotten. I would have been glad, if they hadn't been replaced by fears for Julian.

He hadn't been able to pass the knowledge of the shield trigger to me without traces of the emotions it sparked in him; his control must have slipped. Mine certainly would have. Knowing what gutting did to him, knowing how deep his hatred of it ran … how could I bring myself to destroy him?

My worries might be pointless.
If
the Unseelie were planning something involving the wilders, and
if
they successfully captured Julian, and
if
they found a way to use him, and
if
they didn't kill me taking him—which I vowed they would have to do—then I might have to use it. Maybe. But it wasn't an immediate issue, and so I should put it out of my mind.

It wouldn't go away, though.

The existence of this control on wilders nauseated me. And despite Julian's high-flown words about guns and protecting people, I couldn't help but feel there was more to the situation than he'd been willing to say.

I could guess some of it. Wilders were dangerous, not just individually but collectively. One uncontrolled wilder could cause a lot of damage; fifty wilders, well-trained and with a specific purpose in mind, could do far worse than that. If they ever decided they needed to turn against the governments that had raised them, the ensuing war could destroy whole cities.

And that was what the governments were afraid of.

They shielded wilders, not just to protect people, but to protect
themselves.
To prevent that kind of mutiny. If the wilders tried to slip free of their control, it would be simple to deprive them of their claws. To gut them. And that deeply ingrained fear kept the wilders in line.

Had I learned this three months ago, I would have been calling up the ACLU to scream about it. Right now, all I could think was that the deep shield might be one of our few defenses.

Because if the Unseelie ever did find a way to enslave wilders, we'd need a way to stop them.

My own thoughts sickened me, but I couldn't deny them. That was what it came down to. If the misery of a few could save billions, wasn't the cost justified?

Julian would say it was.

The
geis
was the heart of it. The same impulse that drove wilders to be Guardians, to dedicate their lives and often their deaths to protecting people from dangerous magic, would inspire them to sacrifice themselves for this. Julian hadn't hesitated in telling me to shield him, to
gut
him, even though it was the most horrifying thing I could do short of making him Unseelie. He would willingly ask for misery and madness if he thought it would help others.

For someone often accused of being aloof and inhuman, that was inconceivably selfless.

And I was the only person here who knew how Julian felt. Even Robert and Liesel didn't understand, not completely; I was certain of that. As for the others, the ones who made those accusations—they had
no
idea.

I tried to shake off these morbid thoughts, but failed. I could feel Julian's eyes on me that day and the next, watching, probably guessing at the turmoil in my mind. Falcon was no help; when summoned, he said he had no clues as to what the Unseelie were planning. He had promised to find out, but so far had come up with nothing … or at least nothing he would share with us. And from the Guardian Ring, equal silence—at least as far as Grayson was authorized to tell us. She got very closemouthed, though, which made me think
something
was happening, where we couldn't see.

I prayed it was something useful.

By Friday I'd completely forgotten my promise to Liesel. When I came home that afternoon and dropped my coat onto the couch, she glanced up from her desk and grinned in something like her usual manner. “I found something for you to wear.”

Looking down at my worn but perfectly serviceable sweater and jeans, I blinked. “What's wrong with this? It's all I've got left that's clean.”