The Conspiracy of Us Page 25

  I couldn’t believe the corners of my mouth inched up at that, but they did. And then they fell again, just as quickly. “What will they do to you?”

  There was a pause. “That’s not our main concern right now.”

  Jack pulled away and looked into my eyes. A sweet, sad smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

  “Don’t look at them,” I said, twisting away. The violet felt like a betrayal. “They’re ruining everything.”

  He took my face in his hands and turned it gently toward him. “But they’re the real you,” he said. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful, either way.”

  He brushed my cheek with his thumb and I leaned into his hand, wishing we could have stayed under the covers this morning and shut out the world.

  A voice that wasn’t Stellan’s echoed in the hall, and I jerked away from Jack. He shielded me, and I grabbed the diary and searched frantically for my bag, forgetting they’d taken it away. The door started to open, and I did the only thing I could think of—I shoved the book up the back of my pajama shirt, tucking it into the built-in bra so it would stay.

  The door opened the rest of the way and Stellan stepped in. “I told the guard outside I was ordered to interrogate you. You may have to scream occasionally.”

  I let out a breath and worked the book out from the bra’s elastic, wincing when it got caught.

  Stellan watched my hand under my shirt and quirked an eyebrow. “I may have been misinformed about the purpose of this meeting. I’m not sure I’m into this kind of thing,” he said, shooting a look at Jack.

  Jack glared back.

  I stood up between them, clutching the diary. “Quit it, both of you,” I said. “Like you said, we only have ten minutes.” I shoved the book into Stellan’s chest.

  We told him all we knew, from the bracelet, to the gargoyle, to the diary. How the lines in the diary—The One, the true ruler, the new Achilles. Superior to the false twelve—sounded like they could be about the mandate, but we didn’t know how to interpret them. How also, in the diary, Napoleon seemed worried for the Circle, because of the union and the One. We repeated all we could remember of Mr. Emerson’s message to my mom, and told him everything about the Order’s ransom and the impending deadline.

  Stellan leaned against the wall, turning pages of the diary. “So what you’re saying is you dragged me away from my duties for puzzle-solving time?”

  “It wasn’t exactly our choice,” I said.

  To Stellan’s credit, he didn’t offer a snarky comeback. I could see him checking where we’d taken the note from the endpaper, looking closely at the words. Flipping back through the book.

  While he looked, I paced the cell. Five steps across one way, my bare feet—they hadn’t given me time to put on shoes, either—slapping the concrete. Five steps back.

  I stared up at the low concrete ceiling. Superior to the twelve. The Circle of Twelve. Twelve. Dozen. A dozen eggs. Twelve months. I couldn’t think of anything where one of the twelve was superior.

  I fingered my locket. The symbol on it had to have something to do with the Circle. It had been with those letters from my father. I was suddenly sure there was a twelve in there somewhere. Twelve loops in the knot design, maybe.

  I counted them absently, and then stopped. Counted again. My fingers froze on the necklace. There weren’t twelve spaces made by the design. There were thirteen.

  I counted once more. The swirling Celtic knot pattern made twelve loops around a central loop. Altogether—“Thirteen,” I said out loud. Jack looked up questioningly, and I had a sudden flash of inspiration.

  I sat next to Jack on the cot. “Let me see your tattoo.” I yanked up his sleeve. I’d counted the twelve compass points, but I hadn’t thought about the circle that connected the points. A thirteenth thing.

  I crossed the room to Stellan. “Take off your shirt.” He looked at me strangely, but stripped off his top, tossing it onto the chair. I made him turn around.

  I touched the twelve points on his sun tattoo, then the circle in the middle, connecting them all.

  “The tattoos represent the twelve families, right?” I said to myself. “Did the families make their own symbols, or did someone else do it?”

  “Aristotle assigned the symbols just after Alexander died,” Stellan said.

  I tried to picture the other symbols on the spines of the books upstairs. There was an olive branch with what must be twelve leaves—and the branch would be a thirteenth thing. And a wheel, with twelve spokes—and the outer rim.

  My mind turned in a different direction. Twelve plus the one extra that connected them. My brain was so fried, I’d been looking at it wrong. It didn’t say “the best of” the twelve. Superior meant separate.

  A superior thirteenth thing, the one extra holding the twelve together.

  “What?” Jack said, watching me.

  I tried to explain my line of thinking.

  “So you’re saying maybe ‘superior to the twelve’ means somebody who’s not part of the twelve?” Jack leaned back against the wall, pulling down the sleeve of his tuxedo shirt.

  “Twelve things plus one more thing connecting them,” I said. “It’s on all the tattoos.”

  “Twelve plus one more.” Stellan looked up from the paper in his hand. “The One true ruler.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath.

  Jack stood abruptly. “In all the lore about the mandate, I’ve never heard of the One being someone outside of the Circle. That can’t be what he means. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “It would mean they’re wrong about the mandate is an understatement.” I took his place on the cot and pulled my knees to my chest. “It’s not impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible.” Jack paced. “But the mandate is about the twelve Diadochi. Some random person wouldn’t make sense.”

  He was right. It wouldn’t.

  Stellan had been leaning against the doorframe, but now he stood. “Unless it’s not a random person. Like if the Diadochi’s thirteenth was Alexander the Great himself.”

  My feet fell to the floor with a thud. Not a random thirteenth person. The ruler of the twelve. The one who held them together. Like the twelve knights of the round table, and King Arthur. The twelve apostles and Jesus.

  But if Alexander was the thirteenth for the Diadochi, if his was a thirteenth family of the Circle, then Mr. Emerson must mean the One we were looking for now was . . . from Alexander’s bloodline?

  “But he didn’t have an heir,” Jack said, like he was following the exact same thought pattern. “Alexander’s bloodline died out immediately.”

  “Are you sure?” I said, my head spinning with ideas. “Maybe that’s the missing piece. That’s why nothing’s fit together yet.”

  If somebody from Alexander the Great’s own bloodline was the One, how would anyone find him? Would the Circle even accept him?

  Probably not. He’d be in great danger . . . just like Mr. Emerson had said.

  “Mr. Emerson said in that message he’d found something about the One. Like he was maybe talking about a person?” I said slowly. My gaze flicked to Jack, who paled. “And that he’s been protecting him.”

  Stellan snorted. “Not even you two could be that dumb.”

  Just as quickly, the shock fell off Jack’s face. “I remember that part of the message. He said he brought in whoever it was,” he said to me, ignoring Stellan. “I didn’t meet Fitz until I’d been with the Saxons for years.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Of course. Okay. Dumb idea anyway. If that’s even what he meant, which it might not be, he probably has him hidden somewhere far away.” Still, my heart hadn’t slowed down yet. It felt like we were so close. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

  . . . the One who walks through fire and does not burn . . . the new Achilles . . . the One true ruler . . .


  I kept coming back to the walk through fire thing. If we knew what it meant, it might give us some ideas. Jack had said it probably meant a “trial by fire,” like that they were good in a crisis. But what kind of crisis?

  I sat back and closed my eyes. Fire. Trial by fire. He lives, Napoleon had said, with pictures of flames. Make the One who walks through fire and doesn’t burn . . . Burn . . .

  When I opened my eyes again, they flicked not to Jack, but to Stellan, who leaned against the wall, his back to us, studying the book again. He hadn’t put his shirt back on yet. But now I wasn’t looking at the lines of muscle down his arms. Instead, my eyes were drawn to his tattoo again, and the scars under it.

  Scars from a fire.

  I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger. In some of those stories, the term trial by fire wasn’t metaphorical. To choose the next ruler, candidates would walk through a fire, and the one who didn’t die was special.

  He was the one who literally walked through fire and didn’t get burned.

  I snapped out of my trance to find Jack watching me stare at Stellan. “The new mandate line,” I said. “Repeat it for me again.”

  “‘The One, the true ruler, the new Achilles,’” he said.

  Achilles.

  Achilles was invincible, except for a spot on the back of his heel. When struck there, he could be injured, or even killed. That’s where we got the term Achilles heel, because it was his only weak point.

  And now, thinking in terms of Alexander’s bloodline, I remembered hearing that one of the legends about Alexander the Great was that the night before he was born, his mother had a dream about her baby being consumed by fire and coming out unscathed. Walks through fire and does not burn. All his life, Alexander cheated death so many times that people started saying he was invincible, too. Even that he was descended from Achilles. In fact, some followers called him Achilles.

  The new Achilles. Alexander’s bloodline. Does not burn.

  I looked at Stellan’s scars again. Strange scars, unlike any burn I’d ever seen. That weren’t really like burns at all.

  All the shouting voices in my head coalesced into a perfectly in-tune chorus, singing a song that didn’t make any sense.

  I had to check anyway, to prove my absurd hypothesis wrong.

  “Take off your shoes real quick,” I said to Stellan. “And your socks.”

  Now both of them looked at me like I had lost my mind, and maybe I had.

  “If you’re trying to get me naked, there are easier ways to do it,” Stellan quipped, and then with a sideways glance at Jack, “and more appropriate times . . .”

  “Will you shut up and take your shoes off?” I must have sounded serious, because he sat down on the cot and did it. I motioned for him to prop his feet up.

  Holy mother-freakin’ hell oh wow oh no.

  “Oh my God,” I said aloud.

  Stellan had a burn. Not a quasi-scar like the translucent ones on his back, but angry, puckered skin, scarred like every old burn I’d ever seen. And it was on his right heel.

  CHAPTER 38

  I don’t believe it for a second.” Jack paced the room.

  At any other time I might have appreciated the irony. I’d spent the last few days learning about a world-controlling secret society, and he didn’t believe me?

  Stellan stared at his foot. “After the fire, the doctors called it a miracle I’d lived,” he said slowly. “My sister, too. They’d never seen anything like our scars.”

  I thought of something. “Your parents. If it’s a bloodline thing, one of your parents would have it. One of them wouldn’t have died.”

  “My mother died in the fire. My father had died earlier. Car accident,” he said quietly.

  “You both seem to be forgetting the laws of reality.” Jack paced back and forth. “How would people from a certain bloodline physically not burn?”

  I glanced at Stellan. “I have no idea. Maybe we’ll find an explanation in the tomb, if we get a chance to look for it. It seems like that’s where Napoleon got his information.”

  “Fitz was the one who found me after the fire. He brought me to the Circle,” Stellan said quietly. He touched the scars snaking over his shoulder.

  Jack shook his head.

  “If it is true, and Mr. Emerson knew, why wouldn’t he have told you?” I said.

  “Sounds like he was looking for more information first. About whether the rest of it was true, maybe.” Stellan gave a nod in my direction.

  The tension in Jack’s shoulders spread through his arms, and he eyed Stellan with an even greater animosity than usual, and all of a sudden, I realized the really important thing I’d overlooked.

  “Oh,” I said under my breath.

  The girl and the One. The One was supposed to unite with a girl of the bloodline.

  Or, in other words, me.

  “Napoleon mentioned the union being wrong. It doesn’t necessarily mean—” I couldn’t say it.

  Stellan leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked from the book still in his hand, to Jack, to me. He frowned.

  “Forget it. Let’s assume for a second we’re right, and there’s a conspiracy within a conspiracy going on here. That the One is a thirteenth. Is possibly even Stellan,” I said. “I know it’s crazy, but for argument’s sake, for Mr. Emerson’s sake, we have to think about it. What would it mean?”

  Stellan didn’t say anything, but he closed the book, and his eyes narrowed.

  “It would mean Luc’s not the One,” Jack said.

  “The Dauphins would have to let me go, and then we could contact the Order—” And tell them it was Stellan they were looking for. I met Jack’s eyes. We couldn’t do that.

  I started over again. “It would at least mean they’d have to call off the wedding. We could get out of here in time to tell the Order something.”

  Stellan stood up abruptly. “Of course it would mean no wedding. Of course that’s what it all comes back to.”

  “Well, it does—”

  “How incredibly convenient,” Stellan said with a sneer. “You even thought you’d get me on your side with this ridiculous thirteenth theory.”

  I looked from him to Jack, back again. “What?”

  Stellan tugged back on his shoes and socks. “That’s enough. I’m not stupid. How long have you two been planning this pathetic charade for when she inevitably got caught?”

  “No!” I said. “It’s not—”

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into playing along for this long. I’m taking you back to your cell.” Stellan shrugged his T-shirt back on, grabbed my arm, and steered me out the door.

  • • •

  “Thank you,” Stellan said, opening the door to my room. “The struggling and crying was a good touch, in case anyone thought I was getting sucked in to your schemes.”

  “Arrrrgh!” I threw myself on the hard wooden cot. “It’s not a scheme. Yes, I want to get out of this, but we’re not lying.”

  Stellan stood in the doorway. “Even if this thirteenth thing were true—this whole conspiracy of . . . us—” He looked me over with a frown. “Do you think anyone would accept it?”

  I sat back against the wall, my bare feet dangling from the edge of the cot. “They’d have to accept it if we had proof. If you don’t believe me, maybe I’ll tell someone else.”

  Stellan crossed his arms. “If Monsieur Dauphin hears about you telling anyone, he’ll cut out your tongue so you can’t do it again. He’s not a nice man.”

  I flinched.

  “If you tried to spread this story, the Dauphins would destroy your ‘proof’ immediately. Then they would kill Jack and me for knowing about it.” He shook his head. “You think you’re so smart, but you’re completely naive in the ways of this world. These people are playing for a
lot more than you can imagine.”

  “Then I can run.” Fighting obviously wasn’t going to work, so flight was all I had left. “At least let me run. Pretend I got away.”

  “No.” He smacked a palm on the doorjamb. “Pay attention. You can’t run. If Monsieur Dauphin can’t have you, do you think he’ll let anyone else have you?”

  I swallowed hard.

  “And it turns out I don’t want to see you get killed, kuklachka. So don’t do anything stupid.”

  My mouth went dry. Stellan turned to go.

  “How old is your sister?” I said desperately. I didn’t want to admit it, but Stellan was a lot like me. He’d heard us out because he cared about Mr. Emerson. The way to appeal to him was through the people he loved.

  Stellan opened the door partway, but hesitated.

  “What’s her name?” I said.

  He stayed at the door. “Anya. She’s seven.”

  I bit my lip. “What’s she like?”

  His shoulders rose and fell with one deep breath, and he pushed the door closed again. He pulled a tattered photo out of his wallet. A tiny blond girl with huge blue eyes sat under a tree, laughing. Those same scars-that-weren’t-scars covered the whole right side of her face. Seven years old. She must have been a tiny baby when they were in the fire.

  “Why don’t you leave and be nearer to her?” Hurt flared in his eyes, and I remembered this was why he was trying to transfer to Russia. I handed him the picture, and he gently put it back in his wallet.

  “Even if I could get another job that would let me take care of her, you don’t just leave the Circle. It’s not a job you can quit, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  I glanced at his neck, where I could see the top of his tattoo.

  “Maybe I would have done things differently if I’d known what I was getting into, but I was a child. My parents were dead. It was this and have Anya well taken care of, or have both of us go into the foster system in Russia, which wasn’t an option.” He broke a splinter off the wooden doorframe and picked at it. “So I do my best so that I can try to move nearer to her someday. But it means I can’t make mistakes. Like letting someone beat me to an American girl I have very specific orders about. ”