Yeah, might interfere with the brainwashing.
But at least I knew why Agnes had so many little girls hanging around. She’d probably felt bad turning any of them away, figuring they’d be better off at court than with the Circle. And she was probably right. But that had been before the war broke out and the court ended up at ground zero and, God, the Circle pissed me off!
Sure, take a bunch of little kids away from their families, treat them like some kind of freaks, lock them up where they don’t want to be, and then get surprised when some of them turn on you!
Only my acolytes hadn’t just turned on the Circle, had they? They hadn’t ended up becoming dark mages like some of the kids who escaped those prisons. No. They’d gone for the big-time, planning to bring back the freaking gods, which, yeah, would screw the Circle over nicely but would also manage to kill off the rest of us.
So this was a problem. And I couldn’t even rely on Jonas to help me with it, because he was busy. Trying to lock up another clairvoyant who was out of his control!
And who was going to stay that way.
“Lady, is . . . is something wrong?” Rhea asked, and she was back to that meek voice again, the one I was really starting to hate. But just because right now I hated everything.
“No. So that’s how they met,” I said, looking down at the photo. “Agnes was at court, and Jonas was Lord Protector.”
Rhea shook her head. “He wasn’t Lord Protector then. And they didn’t meet here. They met—”
“Yes?”
“I—I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.”
And yet the only picture of him had been crumpled in an old drawer. There weren’t any others that I’d seen—of him or anyone else. And I suddenly realized what was bugging me about this place.
Where were the snapshots? The napkins with silly doodles on them? The theatre ticket stubs? Where were the stupid stuffed animals he’d won for her at a fair, the crappy “silver” rings bought from a vendor that turned her finger green, the postcards, the tacky souvenir shot glasses, the love notes? This place looked like it was already up for sale and somebody had cleared all the personal stuff away so a buyer would be able to see themselves in it.
And maybe they could have, but I couldn’t see her.
I couldn’t see Agnes.
“Did you find any more photos?” I asked, because maybe she kept the private stuff back here. But Rhea shook her head.
“She . . . wasn’t usually sentimental.” Her fist clenched tight enough to wrinkle the photo for a moment, but then she held it out to me.
“Keep it,” I told her. “You knew her better than I did.”
Her look of gratitude was swift, but it lit up her whole face. She’d be really pretty, I thought, if she ever got out of grandma’s nightgown. I wondered if she even had other clothes.
“And take whatever else you want,” I added. “If anything fits . . .” I broke off at her look of alarm. “What?”
“I—this is what we wear,” she told me. “The ini—the acolytes,” she corrected. “It’s tradition.”
It’s ugly, I didn’t say, because she was clutching the neck of the thing like I planned to rip it off her. “Agnes didn’t wear that,” I pointed out.
“The Pythia wears what she chooses, of course.”
“But you don’t.”
“I—it’s part of the discipline—”
“You’re not in the marines.”
“—and tradition,” she repeated. Like maybe I hadn’t gotten it the first time.
“But somebody changed the tradition at some point, right? That’s old, not ancient.”
She looked down at the nightgown. “Lady Herophile VI designed it. In 1840—”
“It looks it.”