Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“You better have one,” I said. “Or I’m likely to eat the whole plate.”

Rhea finally looked up, and her face didn’t seem to know what to do with itself. I saw a flash of disbelief, some confusion, and something that looked a lot like shame. But she finally settled on anger. “You should have let me go!”

I thought about eating another cookie, but it had seriously pissed me off when Gertie had just stood there, munching pear at me, so I didn’t. “I suppose you mean when you tried to leave court?”

“Yes! A month ago, I tried to go, but you had Rico bring me back!”

I actually hadn’t told him to do that, although I would have if I’d realized what was happening. Luckily, Rico paid more attention to my pretty young acolyte than I did sometimes. But I didn’t think that now was the time to bring that up.

“If you want to leave because you don’t want the job,” I told her. “That’s one thing. But to leave because you’re afraid—”

“I’m not afraid!”

Rhea looked so indignant that I had to hide a smile in my mug. “Okay, you’re not afraid,” I agreed. “That’s good to know, because the training routines around here are a little—messed up. But they do get results.”

“Results?” She stared at me. “I almost killed you!”

“It wasn’t that far of a drop.

Although I suppose I could still develop diphtheria or something—”

“How can you joke about it? How?”

I got up to make myself some more tea. “Pritkin used to drop me off cliffs in training. This really wasn’t that bad.”

Rhea threw back the covers and got up. She was in a high-necked flannel nightgown, something an eighty-year-old might have worn, but on these kinds of nights, it made sense. She didn’t go anywhere and she didn’t pace, probably because there wasn’t room. With all the old furniture they stuffed in here, I was starting to think we’d been bunking in the storerooms.

She wrapped her arms around herself instead and stared at me.

I sat on a chair by the bed and drank tea.

This seemed to upset her.

“Did you know?” she asked intently. “What they planned?”

“No. I wouldn’t have let them do that to you. Which is probably why they didn’t tell me.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Rhea ran a hand through her hair agitatedly, and walked over to the door. But since it was all of five feet away, it didn’t seem to help much. “I’m sorry,” she told me, after a moment. “I’m not thinking clearly.”

“Lots of that going around.”

“It’s just . . . I’m supposed to be able to help you. I want to help you. Lady Herophile was right; I should have been with you, when you went after the vam—Lord Mircea,” she corrected herself. “I could have helped you.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

It was a mild enough question, but it seemed to hit her like a lightning bolt. She whirled suddenly, from facing the door to facing me. “I don’t know!”

“I think you do, though.”

She stared at me, her eyes huge, and didn’t say anything.

“Gertie has all these things,” I told her, after a minute. “I guess you’d call them teaching aids. Do you know where she took me yesterday?”

She just looked at me some more and shook her head.

“Into a . . . I guess you’d call it a tangible memory. Something her grandmother made for her before she came to court. Time in a bottle, where the same day plays out, over and over. She likes to go back there sometimes, have dinner with her nanna, dig for clams, play with this crazy dog. It’s nice, I guess. It’s right on the water, but I didn’t think to ask her where.”

Rhea came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. She didn’t seem to know where this was going, exactly, which was fair because neither did I. But at least she was listening.