“You’re a master manipulator, just like your mother!” he seethes.
“I doubt you knew my mother,” I reply. My heart is beating out of control with panic, but I try to appear as if I’m not bothered by what he says or the violence he displays. I don’t know where the line is with him, but the kafcan mess on the floor in front of me indicates that I’m close to it. I have to decide if I want to cross over it.
“I knew your father. I couldn’t save him from your mother. I will not make the same mistake again,” Telek promises.
“What mistake?”
“Pan was the brightest officer in my arsenal. He was like a son to me. He had a brilliant mind—intuitive with defensive strategy. Your mother ruined him.”
“How’d she do that?”
“It was after the Terrible War. He discovered her while on patrol near the border of our territory. She planned to escape the Brotherhood by disappearing into the masses on Earth—or so she claimed. Pan helped her seek asylum in Rafe, and then they chose to violate our laws by deserting to Earth together. She manipulated him into protecting her, much like you’ve done with the Cavar sent to retrieve you, and again with our Regent. We managed to avoid another war with her. That won’t be the case with you.” He’s laying all the blame for my being here upon me.
“I didn’t ask to come here,” I point out. “You brought me here.”
His fury bubbles to the surface again. “I did not bring you here! If I had ordered the mission, it would’ve been extermination, not an extraction. The mission to remand you was ordered by Minister Vallen and the Regent.”
“To what end?”
“It doesn’t matter. One is dead and the other is very near to it.”
“You don’t know,” I goad him to see if he’ll give me a better answer. “You don’t know why they went looking for me.”
“Minister Vallen believed that your mother had the gift of prophecy,” he says with disgust. “He was foolish enough to hope that she’d come back and help him see if the aggression we were witnessing on the borders of Peney were the Alameeda mobilizing for war. He didn’t understand that the only gift your mother possessed was the one for manipulating men.”
“You don’t believe my mother could see the future?” I ask.
“No more than I believe that you can,” he says honestly. “You’re just like her: a charlatan—a spy. You use your femininity to deceive.”
He thinks I’m with the Alameeda! I snort with derision and ask, “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“If you’re not a spy, then explain how you became Haut Manus’s most trusted adviser in such a short time after arriving here from Earth? Was it your stunning grasp of Etharian politics or just the fact that you are stunning?”
I blanch. I don’t want to reveal to him my ability to divine lies. I make up a plausible excuse. “Maybe Manus was hoping ambassadors from Peney and Wurthem would open up to me because of my mixed heritage? Maybe I appear neutral to those in power?” I suggest as I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“It’s quite interesting to me that when Minister Vallen sent a team to look for you, so too did the Alameeda. Don’t you find that an odd coincidence?”
“No. They have priestesses. One of their genetically gifted priestesses could’ve alerted the Alameeda Brotherhood to Rafe’s plan.”
“Ahh, psychically, right?” he asks with sarcasm. “You still think I believe that?”
“You should.”
He brushes aside my comment. “If you’re not with the Alameeda, why did you run from the Rafe team when it made contact with you?”
I look at him as if he’s mental. “They scared me. I believed I was human. Running was a natural response to fear.”
Minister Telek pushes out his bottom lip and shrugs. “It could be. Or, you could’ve been running to meet with Kyon Ensin, your Alameeda handler, in order to brief him on having made contact and receive instructions. You are, after all, his intended consort, as decreed by the Alameeda Brotherhood.”
“I don’t care what the Alameeda Brotherhood decreed. Your grasp of events is wrong. I attempted to kill Kyon just a few parts ago. You have misread the situation, Minister. The only thing that lies between Haut Kyon and me is malice.”
“As an agent of the Alameeda, you needed to plan exactly how to infiltrate our ranks. The alleged hostility between you is feigned.”
“You’re implying that the knife I left embedded in his chest was just a little friendly banter between friends?”
“You had to make it look like you were fighting back. You didn’t deliver a death blow, choosing instead not to strike at his heart.”
I feel sick, remembering the twinkling sound of empty shell casings tumbling down the staircase. The smell of acrid smoke hanging in the air from the barrels of the Alameeda mini-Gatling-like mechanized weapons; it mingled with the alpha-male scent of Kyon as my knife first nicked his bony chest plate before it slid around it and into him. “If I’m a spy, as you say, why would I try to warn Haut Manus about the attack last night? I told Ustus Hassek, the head of the Regent’s police, as well.”
“Manus is in a coma and Ustus is conveniently dead,” Minister Telek points out. “There are witnesses who saw you kiss Kyon last night.”
“He kissed me! To him, I’m a possession—he thinks he owns me.”
“Does he?”
“No.” I’m falling fast, faster than I ever expected. “I’m not your enemy! Review the incident of the previous Alameeda attack—”
“I have.”
“So you know then. You know I saw that Alameeda attack before it happened—the one to extract Kyon.”
“That’s not what I saw,” Minister Telek replies. Something horrible is growing in me; it’s an ache in the back of my throat. “You were privy to the Alameedas’ presence—you met with Kyon that evening and you had access to many of Alameeda’s allies at the swank you attended that evening. The Alameeda staged the fake extraction attempt in order to manipulate the Regent, Manus, into believing that a feeble Etharian”—he gestures to me with a look meant to discredit—“possesses foresight.”
I’m in my own dark ages, I think, except in reverse—I can’t prove that I’m a priestess. “I’m not the enemy.”
“But you are. You killed Minister Vallen.” He takes another deep draw on the silver cig-a-like, and the scent of brown sugar envelopes me.