Brave New Love (15 page)

She didn’t dare ask if he felt anything at all for her. Not that it mattered. She only wanted him to be happy. “Isn’t it enough that I love you?” she asked.

“It should be, shouldn’t it? I’ll never have to wonder.”

Not like she did. She hesitated, then decided she really did want to know. “Why don’t they use the drug on you? On the boys?”

He blinked, startled. His mouth worked, taking several attempts to reply. “Because you—the girls—are the ones who must be controlled.”

“Why?”

“Because you bear children. To control the children, we must control
you
.”

The way the men controlled sheep, water, scant oil, and anything else that was rare, valued and traded. It made sense on some level, but it didn’t change how she felt.

She said, “I suppose the drug is stronger than chains, in the end? Is that it?”

The smile lit his eyes this time, warming his whole face. He seemed near to laughter, which made her smile in turn.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it is.”

She shrugged. “Still, it hardly seems efficient. When you could just
ask.
”

“I don’t know that anyone’s tried that.”

“You could ask me.”

His manner turned cold again. “It hardly matters now.”

Now she felt angry. He was so sure he was right. “I’d feel the same, with or without the drug.” Shaking his head, he looked away. “How can I prove it to you?”

“You can’t.”

“Give me time, I’ll find a way.”

“Could you, really?”

“If I put my mind to it.”

“But would you want to? You might not like the answer you found.”

“Then again, I might. Or
you
might.”

“You’re very odd,” he said, regarding her with as much interest as he’d ever shown her, which was an improvement.

He finished his glass of water and left her alone.

•  •  •

Only ministers were allowed in the fortress offices, which were temple-like in their isolation and further sanctified with the respect and awe that people showed toward them.
Cloaked figures, ministers going about their duties, ensuring the safety of the empire and everyone in it, went back and forth along the corridor behind the tall steel gate that separated their
wing from the rest of the fortress.

Elspa borrowed a plain brown cloak from the kitchen maid who brought her breakfast. Wearing it, she was nearly anonymous, and looked like one of the servants. She could linger briefly, studying
the goings-on behind the gate—at least as much as she could see.

That was how she learned that the kitchen servants took food and wine to the ministers. At mealtimes the guards unlocked the gate to allow them to file in carrying baskets and pitchers,
sometimes in pairs but often alone. They went with their heads bowed, their faces cloaked, to show their humility. No one even looked at them.

She could do this.

The next day, when the kitchen maid brought Elspa her noonday meal of bread and dried apples, Elspa didn’t eat it, but carried it to the gates of the ministry and joined the line of
servants taking meals to the ministers. She merely acted as if she were one of them.

No one stopped her.

Once inside the ministry halls, she didn’t know where to go next. She didn’t dare act as if she had no idea—she had to keep moving, to pretend she knew what she was doing, as
if she belonged here. She walked purposefully—not too quickly, definitely not dawdling—glancing through open doorways and into rooms, or through the empty windows cut into walls to let
in more light.

In one room she saw tables filled with glassware, tubes, braziers heated by candles. A heady scent of perfume drifted out. A laboratory. She went inside.

Other than the long tables filled with equipment, mysterious bottles, and bubbling concoctions, the room had many cupboards. The ministers must keep the drug for the ceremony in one of these.
They made the drug—but did they bother with an antidote? Why anyone would want an antidote to love, she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps if a girl were claimed, and then her boy
died—

Her heart nearly stopped thinking of it. If anything happened to Thom . . . why, she’d rather die with him.

What she felt—no drug could make her feel like this. This was so much stronger than whatever they’d given her. She had no doubt.

Wishing her brown cloak would make her like a shadow, and keep her hidden for the next few moments, she set down the tray of food, crept to the first of the cupboards and tried the door. Locked.
So was the next, and the next. Every door had a tiny keyhole under the handle, and every door was locked.

Then she heard footsteps outside the door. Rushing, she grabbed up the tray and hoped she had time to flee. But a gray-garbed minister was standing in the door, blocking her way. He stared, and
she did, and for a moment she thought she might faint.

“Who is that meal for?” the bearded man asked. He might have been the one who injected her on her Claiming, only a few days past now but it felt like a whole life. He might have been
all the ministers, standing there, accusing.

Elspa froze, her skin burning. Somehow, her mouth knew what to say. “It is for you, lord.” She waited, heart stopped, for an answer.

“Ah, excellent.” He smiled. “Put it here.”

He pointed at the table, and she gratefully set down the wooden tray. Then she fled.

•  •  •

The cupboards, one of which might hold the antidote, were locked. She had to steal a key. If she could only figure out how. And from where.

When Thom came to sit with her the next day, he asked her a question. “What have you been doing?”

She blushed, even though she didn’t think she had anything to feel guilty about. “What do you mean?”

“You were gone from your chambers for several hours yesterday afternoon. No one knew where you were.”

She’d been so careful. “You’re spying on me?”

“No—” Now
he was
blushing. And how precious and vulnerable the pink in his cheeks made him look. “No, not really, not like that. I’m just . . . I’m
just concerned. About you. Do you feel all right?”

“I feel fine. Wonderful, even. As long as you’re here with me.”

He gave his head a frustrated shake. “I wish you’d stop saying things like that.”

“But it’s true.”

“Where did you go? When no one could find you?”

She shrugged. “I just went exploring. I want to know all about my new home.”

“You’re lying,” he said. Oddly enough he didn’t sound angry—merely curious.

“I would never hurt you,” she said. “Do you believe me?”

“Of course I do. You could never hurt me. The drug ensures it.”

He kept trying to cut holes into her devotion. But she’d show him.

•  •  •

The trouble was, after the day of the ceremony, she had no reason to encounter the ministers, and they had no reason to deal with her. They kept to their chambers, conferred
with the Warlord and his chieftains, did what they did to manage the running of the empire, and never concerned themselves with women who’d been properly disposed of. She’d never come
into contact with them. How, then, could she steal a key to the cabinets? She guessed that they carried keys safely on their person, on some kind of chain around their necks or on their belts. She
wasn’t above stealing one—except for the fact that she would never, under normal circumstances, get close enough to try.

She would have to open the cabinet without a key. This seemed a much more reasonable scenario. She talked to blacksmiths and ironmongers, charming and wheedling, asking about the function and
mysteries of keys, and if she might find one that could be altered to fit a certain lock. She learned of skeleton keys and lockpicks. She traded bits of silk scarves and a few links of the gold
chain Thom had given her as a gift—the gift did not mean as much as this quest—for instruments from tinkers and flea markets, keys of every size and shape, picks, tiny wrenches and
hammers that the peddlers told her could be used to open any lock.

Finally, she sat in her room, her prizes spread out before her—bits of twisted steel and rusted iron, squares and triangles and needle-thin probes, all meant to open any lock, reveal any
secret.

But she hadn’t had time to learn what kind of locks the cabinets used. She’d have to bring all of it, try each one by one, and she’d never have time.

Perhaps she could be more direct.

•  •  •

“You’re very strange, you know that?” he said to her when he came to visit, a month after the ceremony. Only eleven months until they could be married. Far too
long.

“Not really,” she said, studying her hands, laced together in her lap.

“You wander all over the fortress talking to everyone. The other Nymphs stay in their rooms, out of sight. I’ve always thought that women preferred to keep to themselves, that they
were happy out of sight. But not you. What could you possibly be doing?”

She hadn’t meant to draw attention to herself, but she wasn’t sorry either. She lifted her gaze and scooted closer to him.

“You’re going to be Warlord someday.”

“I suppose.” He didn’t seem particularly happy about it, which she thought meant he would be a very good Warlord—he’d see the position as a responsibility not a
privilege. She never had any doubt that he would rule well.

“And I will be your consort.”

“Yes—”

“Well, I want to be a good one. I want to know everything about the empire and how it works. I want to be able to help you.” It was an excuse, but it was also true. Everything she
did was intended to help him. In one way or another. “I talk to people to learn.”

“But Elspa, all you really need to do—all any consort needs to do—is be my companion. To have children. Many children—you won’t have time for anything
else.”

She waved him off. “There’s plenty of time for that. But wouldn’t you like someone to talk to? Someone who knows you and loves you, who you can really trust? Who isn’t
scheming for some political reason?”

“You’re scheming, but I don’t know exactly for what.”

“I told you. I’m going to prove to you that I really love you.”

“Elspa, you don’t—”

“Yes, I do. I must, so you don’t keep looking at me like I’m . . . a burden.”

“You shouldn’t keep interrupting me.”

“Yes. But I can see by the shine in your eyes that you like it, at least a little.”

He smiled at that.

•  •  •

She was being too subtle, she decided. Too careful, creeping and sneaking about, worrying what others thought. She didn’t need to be subtle, she needed to be
quick
.
Get into the laboratory, learn what she needed, get out. They would find evidence of what had been done, they might even discover that she’d done it. But in the end, what could they do to
her
, the heir’s chosen?

All she brought with her the second time she infiltrated the minister’s laboratory were a chisel and a hammer.

She entered as she had before, as a servant with a tray of food, flush with excitement at the trick she was playing and that no one had yet discovered her.

The first time she passed the laboratory room, one of the ministers was there, writing something in a ledger. Elspa kept walking, past the door and down the hallway until it stopped at a closed
door. She could only do this—keep walking, pretending that she had a purpose—for a short time before she drew attention. She turned around and continued back the way she’d come.
If the laboratory were still occupied, she’d leave and try again tomorrow.

This time the room was unoccupied. She looked up and down the hallway, which was empty, and slipped inside.

The room looked much as it had the last time she’d been there, with all the tables and rows of equipment she couldn’t identify. She drew her tools from the pouch hidden under her
shirt and started with the first cupboard.

What she needed was in the cupboards in the back, she was sure of it. She drew her tools from the pouch hidden under her shirt and started with the first cupboard.

The lock wasn’t strong. She wedged the chisel between the door and frame, and one sharp crack with the hammer ripped the lock from the wood, and the door swung open. Inside, racks of glass
tubes held murky brown liquids. She was looking for a potion that smelled of lavender and strawberries. Staying as still as she could, she let the smell of the place fill her nose.

The brown liquid smelled of dried moss.

She shut the cabinet, crammed the lock into place to hide the damage, and moved on to the next.

When she cracked open the third cupboard, the scent of lavender and strawberries pressed at her. The memory rose up, of that amazing day when she saw Thom for the first time, when her life and
fate appeared suddenly before her, a paved and shining road. The feelings surged, her heart lurched in her chest. She had to catch her breath.

Three glass flasks sat on the bottom shelf, corked and inert. She picked one up, swirled it once or twice, studying the purplish, syrupy liquid within. So innocuous, yet so hated by Thom. She
frowned. He was wrong; this had not decided her fate. Her love was her own—she couldn’t
not
love Thom.

She returned the flask to its shelf and quickly studied the rest of the cupboard. The other shelf held just one flask, containing a liquid blue as a twilight sky. It smelled of rainy nights. If
she were to concoct an antidote, she would keep it next to the poison. But would the ministers? Was this simply colored water or some deadly mixture?

She drew the flask from the cupboard and held the label to the light. Not that it helped—she couldn’t read the symbols. But this had to be the right one.

In the fourth cupboard she found hypodermic needles. She took one and drew it full of the blue serum, re-capped it, then wrapped it in her scarf and tucked it in her pouch. Before she left, she
put everything back the way she’d found it.

•  •  •

At supper, she listened closely for rumors, whether the ministers were looking for a thief, if some criminal disaster had befallen their compound. She heard nothing, then
wondered—would they reveal any weakness? Would they ever let on that someone had breached those sacred walls? Perhaps not, if they thought nothing was missing.