“I am seldom happy with who and what I am,” Kordas admitted in a subdued tone. “So, I occupy myself trying to make things better for others, in the hope that if I bring about enough that is good for others, I will, overall, have become a good person when all is weighed. I wear that shirt to remind myself that however—awful—I am inside, there is more to me than only that. I don’t want to stall out at what I was, but it’s foolish to deny it existed.”
Clover was silent for a long time. Motionless, in fact, for long enough that Kordas sighed, emerged from the tub, and dried himself off. It was only when Kordas wrapped a towel around himself that Clover finally replied, “Self-examination is not common for my kind. We mainly exist simply to be, and to avoid not-being. If this one were to sum up my kind—as Dolls—in your terms, this one would say that . . . we are very sad. In our efforts to avoid not-being, we have submerged our aspirations of what we could be.”
Kordas leaned against the wall, and exhaled a long, tense breath. “I understand. When anyone is preoccupied only with staying alive, it is damned near impossible to embrace the fact that a better future is even possible. That’s why poverty is a form of suppression—it keeps the people without power from thinking too big. And you—the Dolls—are the ultimate in poverty.” He didn’t say any more out loud, but it was pretty obvious, even to a vrondi, how angry that made him. And it apparently affected Clover strongly enough that the Doll didn’t move to open the door, but rather, followed Kordas into the bedroom—and held up the thunderstorm-dyed shirt as if presenting a sacred weapon.
Something just happened, Kordas thought. Something I said hit home. “Thank you, Clover. I appreciate it.”
Clover backed away while Kordas donned the time-worn shirt. “We will see to it that your wishes are met.”
But it was Star that helped him into the breeches, coat, and boots. So it looked as if Star had assigned itself to him, Rose to Beltran, and Clover did whatever the other two were too busy to do.
This is a very seductive lifestyle. Yet another way for the Emperor to get his hooks into your soul. It leaves the powerful with nothing else to do but maneuver and indulge. It disconnects them from even their own people—and damn the Emperor for it, it’s diabolically effective.
“All right,” he told Star, when the latter was finally satisfied with Kordas’s garments, hair, and accessories. Or, if not satisfied, the Doll had at least stopped tweaking at them. “Let’s get Beltran, and make that visit to the Fostering School.”
Beltran’s door opened almost as soon as he and Star had stepped into the antechamber. “Rose says that we are making a visit to where the hostages are kept?” Beltran asked.
“Fosters,” Kordas corrected him warningly. “Our Mighty Emperor does not keep hostages. His guests are here to get a proper Imperial education, in order to bring that education home and use it there with their subjects.”
“Oh yes, of course, my mistake,” Beltran said, going a little white.
“No harm done,” Star said. Which he took to mean that they were not being scryed at that moment.
“What’s the name of the Fostering School?” he asked Star, preparing to hold his bracelet up to the Gate before going through. “We had other names for it, of course, when we were there. I never learned the proper one.”
“The Hall of Education,” said Star. He repeated that, and stepped through.
They stepped out into the room he remembered with dread.
It was another “Great Hall”–sized room, but this one had low ceilings, had nothing on the walls but portraits of the Emperor, and was filled with row after row of long tables and benches. The children were organized from back to front by age, with the youngest in the rear and the eldest at the front. They were seated four to a table except at the front. Each table had a teacher. But now, there were two differences.
The first was that beside each child was a Doll. The Doll must be taking the place of the personal servant each had formerly been allowed to bring along.
The second was that his senses told him there were spells on these children. His mage-sight told him what the spells were. Silence, and Stillness. The children literally could not move or speak unless someone, presumably the teacher, spoke the words to counter it.
The teachers ignored his presence, as did the Dolls, as he and Star moved along the wall and he took in the faces of the hostages. Though they could not speak, he saw expressions he recognized. On some, terror. On some, despair. On a very, very few, a look of absorption, as if they were genuinely enjoying what they were learning. And on a few, the same sort of smug self-satisfaction he saw so often on the face of Lord Merrin.
All of the children were boys. That had not been the case when he had been here—there had been a few girls that had been valuable enough to their families that they made good hostages. Not anymore. Just before Isla’s father had died, the Emperor had changed the law from “the eldest living child will inherit the estate and title” to “the eldest living male will inherit the estate and title.”
Girls were of no value to the Empire anymore.
It probably made things a lot easier in the Imperial “foster” dormitories now, though. Although, of course, that still did not preclude older or stronger hostages beating, raping, or abusing the younger . . . and would the Dolls even prevent that?
He’d have to ask Star that question. He really didn’t want to know the answer, but he really needed to know the answer, because that was going to impact his escape plans.
Yet again.
It appeared that this was all rote learning and memorization, drilling only what needed to be known to pass the Imperial tests into the heads of the students. He’d been very lucky; there had been a handful of genuinely passionate teachers when he had been here who had been willing to teach far more than that, to any hostages who were willing to learn. It was not uncommon for weaker children to overstudy, to escape the “free time” when predatory hostages could roam among the others looking for victims—and some, like him, because they were genuinely curious and had had a love for learning itself instilled into them at a young age.
These hostages would go home as proper little examples of the Empire; without compassion, without empathy, thinking of no one but themselves, willing to exploit anyone and anything. If their lands were lucky, and their parents had somehow escaped that conditioning, someone at home would bring them out of that mindset. Or, if their lands were lucky, they would do something that got them killed, and a younger, unindoctrinated sibling would rule in their stead.
But most would be what the Empire wanted.
What the Emperor wanted.
He drew on his time here to school his face into an absolute mask, showing no expression whatsoever.
There were about fifty or sixty students here. At the very front of the room, the oldest were divided up into pairs, each supervised by a human teacher, seated at small tables, and facing each other. On the table between each pair was one of the Three Games. It was clear that for the Emperor, mastery of the Games was the most important thing these hostages could learn.