The Broken Ones

by Danielle L. Jensen

  Except my father almost never came to these audiences – they were for commoners and the lower levels of the nobility. The only reason he was here was because my sister had given him reason to be.

  “He argues with everyone,” Anaïs replied. “Let’s go. I’m hungry and I fancy a float on the lake.”

  Marc and I followed them out, exiting the palace gates just as a gust of wind blasted through the city, carrying with it countless sheets of paper. Half-bloods and full-bloods alike snatched them from the air or picked them up off the ground, and without thinking, I did the same.

  * * *

  Those who claim to be our leaders are no more than VILLAINS and OPPRESSORS more concerned with sating their own GREED and DESIRES than with the welfare of the citizens they claim to serve. Rise up and FIGHT those who would deny our right to LIBERTY and FREEDOM. Rise up and FIGHT those who would rather send us to our DEATHS than pay a FAIR WAGE. Rise up and FIGHT those who care more for PROFIT and POWER than DECENCY and EQUALITY. Rise up…

  * * *

  The piece of propaganda went on from there in the way of all polemic – words chosen to inspire and incite the populace against the King and the rest of the aristocracy. The populace which, at this very moment, were all staring at us with hate in their eyes. But I barely noticed, my gaze fixed on the page. On the ink. On the streaks marring the quality of the reproduction.

  Lifting my head, I saw my father standing motionless, reading the piece. Then he reached into his pocket, extracting a stained packet of papers, eyes shifting between them.

  “Bloody stones and sky, Marc,” Tristan snarled, staring at the sheet of paper in his hand. “How does this continue to find its way into Trollus?” Then his magic surged, his voice amplified over the crowd, mocking and cruel. “Rise up? Oh, by all means. Rise up against those who hold all that rock–” he gestured upward “–off your heads and see just how well that goes for you.” Then he stormed off through the crowd, Anaïs hot on his heels.

  “I’m sorry, but I need to go after him,” Marc said.

  “Of course,” I said, smoothing the page out in my hands, a dull roar filling my ears, the troll lights of those around me suddenly seeming too bright as understanding dawned upon me.

  As he walked away, I couldn’t help but regard him in a whole new light. Because the page I held, and all those floating through Trollus to fuel the fires of revolution: they’d been printed on the exact same press as the twins’ comics, which my heart told me was no coincidence.

  My friends were sympathizers.

  And I’d just given proof of it to my father.

  Chapter Eleven

  Marc

  The feel of her skin seemed burned into my fingertips as I followed my friends through the city, everything and everyone we passed an unfocused blur, my mind back in the throne room with Pénélope.

  I hadn’t intended for that to happen.

  Tristan and I had planned this ruse for weeks, but all thought of plots and politics had fallen away with her standing next to me. The spicy scent of her perfume had risen to fill my nose, her magic pressing up against mine right up to the point that it wasn’t, our powers melding together in a way I hadn’t known possible. A level of intimacy I’d dreamed of, yet never experienced until that moment.

  But it had been nothing like touching her.

  The feel of her rapid pulse beneath my fingertips had chased away all rational thought, the soft intake of her breath making my heart race. It had taken Tristan slamming the throne room door to bring me back to the moment, and I’d had no choice but to drop her hand or risk missing everything. Though in hindsight, missing Tristan’s performance might have been worth it.

  “You’re an idiot,” I muttered to myself. Pénélope almost never attended the public audiences, so it was no coincidence that of all the places she could have sought me out, it was there. The Duke had probably sent her to distract me – or worse, to see how I reacted to Tristan’s proposal. It was all just an act on her part.

  But it had felt real.

  It had felt right.

  I shook away my thoughts as we entered the path leading down to the flooded stadium, Tristan keeping up the act of being irritated until we were well out of sight. Then he abruptly picked Anaïs up off her feet and whirled her in a circle. “You are brilliant. That couldn’t have gone more perfectly.”

  “Not even if your father had agreed to change the law?” I asked, coming up behind them.

  “Wouldn’t that have been something?” Tristan replied, setting Anaïs back on her feet. “Fortunately, the Duke was there to argue against it. The last thing we need is our schemes bolstering my father’s popularity, which a change in this law would most certainly have done.”

  This was an area where Tristan and I disagreed. Hundreds of half-blood lives would be saved by the King changing the laws. Yes, it would weaken momentum for the sympathizer cause, but that seemed a small price to pay. I counted every life saved, every small victory, as worthwhile, but for Tristan, it sometimes felt like it was all or nothing. I tried to temper him, to make him see those he was fighting for as individuals rather than pieces of a grand plan, but there were days I believed I’d have more luck getting water from a stone. “You might consider how much damage you’re doing to your own popularity.”

  He shrugged as though he couldn’t care less what the half-bloods thought of him – what anyone thought of him – and said, “I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, redeeming time when men least think I will.”

  “Be careful to whom you quote poetry written by a human, or people will start to question the veracity of your behavior.”

  “Exactly,” he responded. “This is how it has to be, whether I like it or not. When I tear down the system of their oppression, they won’t care about my previous conduct.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that, but I said nothing as his expression brightened, eyes having lighted upon the twins.

  “Rise up!” Vincent shouted from where he stood on a floating platform with his sister.

  “Your timing was perfect,” Tristan called back. “All those sheets of paper flying through the air the moment we stepped outside the gates – couldn’t have done it better myself.” He ran down the worn steps to the banks of the lake, then slid across the water on a sheet of magic until he stood between the twins, where their banter continued. I went to follow, then hesitated as I caught sight of Anaïs’s expression. “Is something wrong?”

  “Pénélope.” She sat down heavily on an eroded step, staring blindly out over the water. “She heard me laying the trap for my father last night, and she thinks I don’t care about half-blood lives. That I sabotaged any chance of the law being changed. That I’m no better than our father.”

  I sat next to her. “That was part of the plan. She can’t know that you giving your father that information was intended to bait him into riling the half-bloods into action – toward joining the revolution – because it would raise too many questions about your true loyalties.”

  “I’m aware.” Her tone was biting, though I knew it was directed at the situation, not me. “But the way she looked at me…” Anaïs sighed. “There is no one individual to whom I’m telling the whole truth. On some level or another, I’m deceiving every single person in my life, and trying to keep track of it all…” She rubbed a hand across her eyes. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I want.”

  I silently considered her admission. Anaïs was not a sympathizer by the true definition of the word. She believed power mattered: that half-bloods and humans were not our equals. Yet she was as dedicated to the success of the revolution as the rest of us. Not because she might stand to benefit from Tristan taking the throne. Rather, it was a feeling deep within her core that those with power should use it to protect those without, and she seemed to take every loss of a half-blood life as a personal failure.

  Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I finally asked, “Are you going to tell Tristan the truth about w
hy your father has decided to move against him now?”

  Anaïs exhaled softly, then shook her head. “This is why we can’t trust Pénélope with our secrets.”

  There was no anger in her voice, only resignation, so I waited to see if she’d say more.

  “I don’t want him to know about the betrothal.”

  “Why?” I asked, curious, though I knew I was walking on dangerous ground.

  She twisted a ring around one finger, the gemstones winking in our troll light. “Because he’d feel obligated to do something,” she finally said. “He’s not always rational when it comes to his father, Marc. You know that better than anyone. If he learned his father had broken our betrothal, he’d bond me for no other reason than because his father said he couldn’t.”

  “I think he’d be more motivated to undo the hurt you’d endured than by spite,” I countered, knowing how protective my cousin was of her.

  Anaïs wrinkled her nose. “That’s worse.” Her hands grew still. “I want him to choose to bond me because he loves me or I don’t want him to choose me at all.” Turning her head, she stared at me, unblinking. “Are you going to tell him?”

  “No,” I said, admiring her bravery even though I could see it costing her in the end.

  “I didn’t think you would.” Her eyes drifted to Tristan, whose face was still bright with excitement, and her lips curved with a sad smile. “You’re the only one who understands what it’s like to love someone, to be willing to do anything for them despite knowing that you’ll never get to be with them.”

  Though I didn’t think it was intended to do so, the sentiment was like a punch to my gut. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Pénélope safe,” I said.

  “I know. You’re the only one I trust her with.” But her hands still balled into fists. “This plan of ours is working for now, but it won’t work for long. I’m afraid… I don’t think I can bear to lose her. But the only way I can see to protect her is to kill him.”

  Her father.

  “When Tristan talks of killing his father and taking the throne, I know he sees it theoretically,” she said. “As a step in his plan. But when I think of doing the same, I imagine it as it would be. The way it would feel to twist his neck or plunge a knife into his heart. What it would be like to pull him apart as a child might a spider. I see the blood on my hands.”

  A tremor ran through her and I didn’t know what to do or what to say, because Anaïs so rarely showed any form of weakness. To acknowledge it might do more harm than good.

  “I know he’s evil,” she continued. “I know he’s a villain and that he opposes everything I’m fighting for. But he’s still my father.”

  “It might not come to that,” I said, knowing my words were hollow because they did nothing to alleviate the fear growing in my chest. “All we need to do is play our parts until Tristan makes his move, then we can pluck Pénélope from danger and your father can learn to live under a new regime or face the consequences.”

  “I know,” she said, rising to her feet and stepping out onto the surface of the water. “But I’m afraid that by the time Tristan’s ready, it will be too late.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Pénélope

  Over the coming days, I found myself a creature consumed, the intrigue I’d become a part of fighting for precedence with more personal thoughts, the only commonality between them that they both centered on Marc. I saw him often, but always we were in the company of others, and that charged moment we’d shared in the throne room, the intensity of physical contact, remained so elusive and impossible to repeat that part of me wondered if it had happened at all.

  But while that fleeting few minutes of intimacy slipped further into the fabric of my imagination, the notion that my friends – and my sister – formed the heart of the sympathizer cause became more and more of a reality to me. Over and over, I ran through the events of that day, and those that had preceded them. From Marc arranging for the human trader to transport contraband, to the twins being behind the strange order, to my father’s inference that he’d expected to catch the humans with propaganda. Most of all, I reflected on how Anaïs had lured my father to the King’s audience where he articulated how little regard the upper classes possessed for half-blood life minutes before sympathizer propaganda was released attacking that very belief system. All of it seemed like a perfectly orchestrated plan to stir up anger against the King and the aristocracy, and one that could only have been accomplished by players at the highest levels.

  And I’d put everything they were working toward in jeopardy.

  It didn’t matter that I hadn’t known. That I’d been motivated to rid my sister, Marc – and all of Trollus – of a future ruler who I’d believed was a villain. A tyrant in the making. Good intentions didn’t make up for the fact that I’d given my father information to help in his war against the only faction in Trollus attempting to do any good. Which meant I needed to find a way to undo the damage that I’d done.

  * * *

  Opportunity came in the form of one of my father’s gatherings. A select group of aristocrats arriving under the cloak of illusion through the open front door, the only clue to their presence the massing of power under our roof. A group of trolls who, for reasons unknown, wanted no one in Trollus to know they were meeting in one place.

  Which, in my mind, meant they were discussing something worth hearing, especially when they all ventured into the atrium.

  Easing open one of the delicate doors, I slipped off my shoes and crept into the glass structure. This was my father’s abode, and for that reason alone, I avoided it unless in my sister’s company. Still, I knew the paths through the garden like the back of my hand, as well as the best places to hide.

  Extinguishing my light, I drifted through the maze of stone sculptures and fountains, the air full of mist from water that sprayed and soared in every direction, whether it belched from the mouths of dragons or created arching paths for dancing pixies. Streams gurgled under delicate bridges, tiny fish made of gold and jewels glittering in the light of the artfully placed lamps. Heated sconces released the scent of gardenias, and from above, raindrops fell in an occasional storm, making a soothing pitter-patter against the ground below.

  At the center of the oasis sat a large gazebo, and it was from there that I felt the press of magic from at least a dozen powerful trolls. I could hear nothing over the echoing sound of running water, which was likely why they had chosen this meeting place. At best, they discussed secrets, at worst, treason against the crown. My bet, my hope, was they discussed both. The area around them would be warded, but I knew my father and his traps. And how to avoid them.

  Reaching one of the small bridges, I crouched next to it and formed a small raft of magic that I placed atop the water. Hooking my shoe heels into the bodice of my dress, I knelt on the raft, holding onto the bridge until I had my balance, an illusion of running water balanced over my head. Then I let go.

  The raft wobbled and rocked as it made its way down the stream, and I held my breath as I floated over the perimeter of my father’s ward, the ground and stream bed coated with magic set to do horrible things to anyone who set foot where they were unwanted. That included me, should I fall in and touch the bottom.

  Voices reached my ears.

  “It could be nothing more than rumors, you know,” a woman said, and I recognized the voice of the Comtesse Báthory. “Half-blood wishful thinking that swirls and grows until fiction becomes fact because they’re too stupid to realize the difference? You do recall these same sort of whispers grew some twenty years ago, and nothing came of that.”

  “They aren’t just rumors.” My father’s voice was sour. “And it isn’t just half-bloods. There is support for the sympathizer cause growing amongst certain of the guilds, and possibly even into the ranks of the aristocracy. For that to be occurring means they’ve found a leader who can do more than just spin words – whoever it is has power.”

  The raft wobbled
, and I clenched my teeth against a gasp. Then I slowly lifted my head. I was approaching the gazebo; the Comtesse, with her hair piled a foot or more above her head, sat on one of the divans with her back to me. My father sat to her left and my grandmother next to him, but I could see nothing more of their company but the balls of light hanging over their heads.

  “And you think this leader is Tristan de Montigny?” Báthory laughed, and the sound made me cringe. She was a murderess of some fame even within Trollus, the stories of what she did to her victims enough to curdle even the King’s blood. He’d come down hard on her recently, which explained why she was in my father’s company. Her interest was in carnage, not in politics.

  “My, my, how your tune has changed, Your Grace,” she continued. “Not so long ago you seemed willing to turn a blind eye to any of the boy’s faults if only he kept his sights on your precious Anaïs. Now that we all know her blood is faulty, you seek to throw mud on his character in the most ridiculous of ways.”

  My father shifted, his shoulders rigid, and my heart roared in my ears for fear that he would turn and see the distortion of my illusion.

  Báthory cackled. “The half-bloods loathe him even more than they do his father,” she said. “From their own lips I’ve heard their disdain, and their fear. Just last month I watched him throw a servant in the river because the girl had spilled a drop of sauce on his sleeve.”

  I was almost to the tunnel leading under the gazebo. Digging my fingers and toes into the magic beneath me, I reached up with one hand and caught at the edge, holding myself in place against the current, but blissfully out of sight.

  My grandmother made a noise of disgust. “And what fate would’ve befallen the servant if it had been your sleeve, my lady?”