29
How?” Cilla shouted. She gripped the bars of her cell. “Tell me how!”
“Maybe later,” Ruudde said. “Lorres, thank you for your assistance. You can leave Amara to me. Gacco, keep an eye on the girl. Remember: a single drop of blood …”
Nolan stared through Amara’s eyes at Cilla in that cell.
“Got it.” Gacco adjusted his marshal helmet. Tufts of woolly hair spilled from underneath. He took a spot on the bench opposite Cilla’s cell—
—they must’ve found Cilla at the harbor. Nolan wrote furiously in the new journal. Every word they said. Every name they mentioned. Every odd expression or look of surprise. He needed to stop himself from freaking out, and this was the only tried-and-true way he knew to do so.
So far, he’d confirmed two things: One, Ruudde hadn’t wanted them to know the truth about Cilla. Two, Ruudde didn’t want her harmed.
At least Cilla hadn’t known she wasn’t the princess. At least she hadn’t lied to Amara. The how of faking the tattoo was easy. Control of the palace meant control of its mages and ink. But why?
Nolan chewed his pen until the plastic cracked—
“—Amara?” Ruudde jerked his head. “Come.”
“I know you’re working with Jorn!” Cilla shouted. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“Just keep yourself alive while I talk to your friends, all right?”
Friends. Plural.
Ruudde gripped Amara’s neck the same way Gacco had done to Cilla and shoved her down the hall. Amara saw a flash of Lorres, mid-sign, then he was gone. She tried to keep up with Ruudde’s pace even as Cilla shouted behind them. Though not tall, he took firm steps, directing her around the corner of the cell block. In this wing, the floor tiles smoothed, and the walls turned light, like a whole other world.
Leaving Cilla behind.
With his free hand, Ruudde opened the door to a room—a bedroom, it looked like, with an open bed instead of one recessed into the wall. Luxury guest quarters. They hadn’t been used in a while. Dust covered the windowsills, cobwebs dangled from the corners, and cocoons clung to the far wall.
Ruudde shut and locked the door. He pulled the storm cover over the window just as Amara was calculating the distance between her and the glass.
“Kid, if you’re thinking of escaping—don’t. I can heal faster than you, and you’ve never known the first thing about magic. So sit. Let’s talk.” Ruudde dropped onto the unmade guest bed and motioned at the single chair in the room.
Amara took a step toward it but made no attempt to sit. “Cilla isn’t the princess,” she said. Signing the words herself made them feel no more true.
The real Cilla had died in the coup, just as everyone thought. The Cilla Amara knew shouldn’t even be using the name.
Which name, then?
“Nope. The girl you know is just a regular girl,” Ruudde said. “And it’s not you I want to talk to, Amara. Sit the hell down.”
“You want to talk to …”
“To whoever’s in there, yes.” Ruudde looked flatly across the room. “You’ll only irritate me if you keep me waiting.”
Nolan felt Amara’s hesitation, her questions; she wondered why he hadn’t already taken over. Then she remembered—he wasn’t supposed to unless she invited him. It’s all right, she thought. The distaste that ran through her told Nolan it wasn’t. At least not in any way that counted. Do it.
Taking over came more easily every time. He simply focused on moving, and Amara’s mind faded out of reach.
Ruudde smiled, pleased. “I’ve waited so long to talk to you. What do I call you?”
“N-OO-L-U-N.” He sat in the chair, sending a puff of dust billowing.
“Nolan,” Ruudde repeated. He pronounced it correctly, even better than Cilla had. “Where are you from?”
“E-A-R-D,” Nolan spelled. The unsurprised look on Ruudde’s face confirmed Nolan’s suspicions. If Ruudde wasn’t from Earth himself, he knew someone who was. “Which world are you from?”
Ruudde cocked his head. A beaded lock of hair dropped from behind his ear to dangle by his face. “Apparently you kids know more than you’ve been letting on. Yes, I’m like you. I enjoy Ruudde’s body, but it’s not my own.”
“Mages don’t heal,” Nolan said, something between a question and a statement. He itched for a pen to write all this down.
“Well, they can, given enough time and energy, but it most certainly causes backlash. For the likes of us, not so much, eh?”
“Are all ministers possessed? How can we travel like this?”
“How do mages receive their power? Spirits?” His tone was mocking. “We’re born this way. I suppose we’re just special.” He propped his elbows onto his knees. “No, not all ministers are ‘possessed,’ but most are. The others don’t have a clue. I found this body a long time ago. Ruudde was already the minister of the greater Bedam area—and a mage. I’d always wanted to try a mage. I already knew I healed every body I was in, but when I started doing heavy spells without paying any kind of physical toll, I realized the possibilities. I located other travelers and found mage bodies for them to use. You know the rest. You know we have power. Magical, political, financial. Name your price.”
Nolan let the information sink in. If they could choose which people to possess, they had far more control than he did, medication or no medication. So what could they need him for?
“My price?”
“People want Cilla dead. You know that. And, no, those mages are not working for us. We want to keep Cilla alive—or the girl we call Cilla, anyway—but she’s too easy a target if we keep her in a static location like the palace.”
Nolan had already suspected the mages who chased Cilla and the possessed ministers weren’t allied. But … “You were one of those mages to curse her. What changed?”
“Ahh. You think I cursed her, then changed my mind? Interesting theory.”
Nolan didn’t know what to make of Ruudde’s amusement. He’d found Cilla so quickly that he must have been able to trace her. They’d removed all possible anchors; that left only the curse.
“Let’s get back to my point: Cilla needs to stay on the run, and she needs to do it with a healer who will keep her safe. I don’t know what made Amara come to Bedam, and I don’t care. Make her return to Jorn. Bully her, take over permanently, do whatever you like. In return, name your price. Money. Mansions. Truly excellent food. Women, men, whatever the Jélis call those others. As long as you keep Cilla alive, we’ll arrange it.”
“I’m not taking Amara back to Jorn,” Nolan said. “He tortured her.”
“That bad?” Ruudde looked as if he genuinely regretted hearing it. “We told him not to … Look, we can fix that. He’ll be harmless.”
“I’m not taking over! It’s her damn body.”
“You seem to feel at home in it, though. It could be yours easily. How long’s it been now?” Ruudde raised an eyebrow, then plucked at his topscarf, which was wrapped to dip at his chest and reveal a triangle of olive skin with a glowing tattoo in the center. “I’ve gotten used to being Ruudde over the years. Some of my colleagues even prefer their new bodies. You might find you like Amara’s, too.” He gazed at Nolan steadily. “Consider this alternative, Nolan: If you like Amara so much, we’ll hurt her. We can hurt Cilla, too. You don’t want to know all the things we can do without spilling blood.”