TWELVE

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We sat around the fire, at ease, or nearly, for the first time in days. We were not all friends, but there didn’t seem to be any lingering enmity, and that might be enough to let friendships happen. Failing that, we could at least do what we needed with a minimum of distraction.

And what we needed to do now was… plan.

“We should ford the Kralsbeck by midmorning tomorrow,” Elizabeth said as she took her seat. “From then on, we will be in duchy Wafret, two days’ hike from the Duke’s manor. But what then?”

“What exactly do we know?” Nancy asked, turning toward Helen. “You heard it most directly.”

“We know precious little. The Duke, like half of those who were in the capital, fled to his estate in the wake of the recent attacks,” Helen said. “That in itself is, of course, not nearly enough to implicate him. However, his guard was ready for an attack where others were not; they took the greatest share of the assassins, and put all they found to the sword.”

“Eliminating the knowledge of his own scheme,” Jacob murmured.

“Or,” added Rebecca, “being of a thoroughly suspicious mindset and a touch overzealous in pursuing his own safety. Let’s not leap to unsupported conclusions, good people; I do suspect Wafret is involved, but what we know so far ties him to the plot only by circumstance.”

“Is there anything else to add?” Elizabeth enquired, nodding to acknowledge Rebecca’s point.

“One thing,” Rebecca cut in, somewhat to my surprise. Even more so was what she actually said: “Anya Trellig’s name came up in all this – she was on the night watch at Weston House, her name was known to the conspirators, and she quite likely assisted in setting the fire. She’s from Wafret – was part of the Duke’s personal guard in the past. It’s possible she’s acting independently of the Duke, but one way or another, she’s in this up to her ears. With the Duke back on his estate and Weston House put to the torch, it’s possible she accompanied him back to the duchy.”

“So,” Elizabeth summarized, “there is one person who is most likely here and may be involved, and one who may be here and is involved. Two angles to work from. But where do we start? It’s not as though we can simply walk up to his door, ask if he had the royal family killed, and expect him to admit it and come with us.”

“We might have another way to learn these things,” said Rebecca, giving my hand a light squeeze.

It didn’t take me more than a breath to figure out what she was referring to. “We can’t rely on that,” I objected.

And found myself met by blank, uncomprehending stares.

Rebecca brought her hand up to my jaw, chuckling softly. “Edmond? I hadn’t said that aloud.”

The ramifications of that took a little bit longer to register.

“The point here is that we might be able to get the truth from their heads without needing to ask them directly – and if they don’t know that we know, they won’t have as much reason to do us a harm. If this happens, we’ll want some hard evidence – but a telepath’s word will suffice before the House of Lords if we can’t get anything else.”

“So all we need do is turn it into something on which we can rely,” Elizabeth mused. “What in the world would that take? I’ve never been this close to anyone else else with that manner of gift, I’ve no idea of what goes into their training.”

“It seems to start most easily with those for whom there is some personal connection,” Rebecca said. “Friends, family, lovers. If there is some fondness on the subject’s part, it’s easier for the one for whom they’re fond to get a glimpse of their thoughts – as I just recently demonstrated.” She flashed a toothy grin, and then continued, “Plainly, we can’t rely on such things – but it could still be a useful starting point to practise. You’ll have to try to focus on it, Edmond – I wish I could say more about it, but it’s not a gift I have, so all I’ve heard has been very tenuous at best.”

Focus. Focus what?

It actually turned out to be not so difficult as I feared. She concentrated on a phrase, I turned my attention to her – not necessarily my eyes or my ears, but my awareness – and suddenly I heard snippets of thought; with some practise, even in the course of that evening, I found myself able to pick out complete phrases, not only in her, but in Travis as well.

I didn’t think it coincidence that it was both of those whom I’d bedded that I could reach. I couldn’t do so with Elizabeth, but that wasn’t entirely surprising, all things considered.

I kept at it the next day, as we crossed the Kralsbeck River and headed into duchy Wafret. It wasn’t so easy, of course, when we all of us were more intent on walking than on anything else; sometimes I thought I’d sensed a thought, but was never quite sure if it wasn’t my own. Part of the difficulty was that when I made an effort to focus, I didn’t “hear” the words as I had in the past – I became aware of them, but it was like I had thought them, not like the other person had said them.

Still, by the time we camped on another rocky tor, I was able to pick out snatches of ongoing thoughts, and to my embarrassment, caught a snippet from Helen’s mind starting with her finding me fair, and promptly going into quite explicit detail of how she wished to bed me.

Embarrassment, yes, there was aplenty, but in truth it was somewhat exciting, as well. That she’d shown no indication of it outwardly – sneaking glances, perhaps, but otherwise going about her work – made it feel a bit stranger still, but in a way only added to the allure.

Was her time coming up, then? I could hardly help but wonder. If so, it might be best to see that come to pass sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t do to have her, and the other men, distracted should I need to work on my own for any great length of time; we’d lost enough time on the way here to be quite aware of that.

But truly, the most curious thing of all was that it did feel easy. I hadn’t heard anything between the first time with Angelique and the evening before with Rebecca… or had I? From time to time on the course of our trek, many of us had had little things to say. Maybe some of the offhand remarks I thought I’d heard, hadn’t been spoken aloud at all? It would make a good deal more sense, truly, than this coming to life so easily when I tried to pay attention to it, but not at all in the intervening days. Much more sense indeed.

One thing I couldn’t yet do was guide the course of thought. Rebecca and Elizabeth, both of whom had been witness to the proceedings of the high court at times that a telepath was needed, both agreed that such a one could delve deep into the minds of even the unwilling, and pry out the secrets they sought. All I could learn was what a person was thinking at that exact moment – by the end of our first evening in Wafret I could do so with any of my companions, but it was a far cry from finding hidden truths in an enemy’s mind.

“I’m not sure it’d be an entirely wise course, come to think of it,” Elizabeth noted that night as we cleaned up after our meal. “It didn’t seem to be a very gentle process.”

“No, indeed,” Rebecca confirmed. “Certainly not discreet. If you can only know what someone is thinking at the moment, though, it may still be possible to guide them to think what you wish.”

“How…?”

“Simply by steering a conversation,” she replied. “Keep the words flowing, and the person you’re speaking to will think of different things as they reply.”

This was not so easy. Oh, it was easy enough to talk to my companions, or to try to get a glimpse of what they were thinking, but the combination was much more difficult. Keeping track of two different conversations at once, even if one of them was one-sided, was not something I’d ever needed to do.

“If the courts are not the world for you,” Rebecca remarked after a frustrating half-hour, “you might consider becoming a mediator. Knowing what people are thinking can be useful there, but being able to follow two lines of thought is crucial.”

“I’m not so certain that would be wise, then,” I responded, scooping out a bowl of stew. “I’m hardly doing well here.”

“You’re doing better than you think,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not sure if it’s more difficult to follow thoughts that are about the matter at hand, or those that aren’t, but I suspect it’s more difficult to keep them apart when they are related to one another than when they come from entirely different sources.”

“That still doesn’t leave this very useful,” I said, shaking my head.

“So perhaps someone else will need to be there assisting you,” was her suggestion, as she stood and squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t fret so, Edmond. I’m aware that you’ve been frustrated by this, but I think you’ve actually been progressing rather well, considering that nobody here can give you any sort of formal instruction.”

I tried to take her words of confidence to heart, but my own doubts made it rather difficult to do. Always when I tried to think of what she’d said, instead I only could see the number of times I’d made an error, sometimes minor, sometimes completely ruining the thread of thought. I certainly wasn’t one of those people who was cut out to be a spy, it seemed. And normally I’d not have minded that thought in the least, but at the time it would have been a damnably useful talent to have.

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