The Conspiracy of Us (23 page)

W
e both jumped up. The door opened a few inches, then got stuck on the chair I'd wedged under the knob. Jack bolted for the window, grabbing the incriminating tuxedo jacket on the way. Someone kicked the door open, shattering the little gold chair into pieces.

Monsieur Dauphin strolled in. He nodded at Jack, halfway out the window, and a dozen guards streamed into the room, their guns trained on him. Jack stopped still and raised his hands above his head, jacket dangling from his fingers. The guards surrounded him and wrenched him back inside.

Behind Monsieur Dauphin, Stellan slipped into the room.

How did they know? They cuffed Jack's hands behind his back. I was going to throw up. But he wasn't the Dauphins' to punish. They'd have to give him back to the Saxons. I could reason with my father. Couldn't I?

A guard pressed a gun to Jack's side. “This isn't what it looks like,” I pleaded, even though it was obviously exactly what it looked like. “He was helping me, um . . .”

“I couldn't care less what he was doing with you.” Monsieur Dauphin's cold, low voice sent a shiver down my spine. “He won't live long enough to do it again.”

“No!” I lunged toward Jack, but another guard grabbed me and turned me to face Monsieur Dauphin. Between him and Stellan, Luc peered out. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he looked shaken.

“What I care about,” Monsieur Dauphin said in that same eerily calm voice, “is what you've been hiding from us.”

My stomach dropped to my toes. Monsieur Dauphin crossed the room toward me. “I don't know what you're talking about.” I struggled against the guard's iron grip.

“Don't touch her,” Jack snarled from behind me, but he cut off abruptly, and I turned to see a knife at his throat.

Monsieur Dauphin, towering over me, grabbed my face in one massive hand. He leaned down, peering into my eyes, so close I recoiled from his hot breath on my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and then a hand from behind me was forcing them open, holding my eyelids apart.

“Stop!” I tried to yell, but Monsieur Dauphin gripped my face so hard, the word came out as a whimper. His other hand came up to my eye, and I knew what he was doing.

His thick fingers swiped at my eyeball, and I could feel my contact lens, dry and sticky from having been slept in overnight, ripped from my eye. Half my vision went blurry, made the world look unreal.

Monsieur Dauphin let go of my face. I blinked involuntarily, and a gasp went up from the room.

“It's true,” Luc breathed. “Why didn't you tell me?”

Beside him, Stellan watched impassively, but I could see his jaw twitch. It was him. He'd figured it out and turned me in.

“She didn't tell you because Saxon had some kind of plan with her.” Monsieur Dauphin continued to peer at me curiously. “But now, she'll help us instead.”

“No.” I shook my head desperately. “There's no plan. Saxon doesn't even know about my eyes,” I said, then had a flash of inspiration. “Don't you need his permission to do anything to me? He'll be here any minute. He'll stop this.”

“Ah, but he's been told you've run away. He's off looking for you right now. Unfortunately, he won't find you until you're already ours. He won't be happy about it, but it'll be done.” Monsieur Dauphin wiped his hands on a handkerchief.

“But you're not even sure who the One is,” I choked out. “You don't know it'll work.”

He handed the handkerchief to a guard. “And we're not going to know, so it's time to take matters into our own hands.”

The room looked fuzzy, wrong. “You don't need me,” I said desperately. “You have the baby.”

I saw nothing more than a flash of movement before the back of Monsieur Dauphin's hand hit my cheek with a deafening
thwap.
I fell to my knees, choking on a cry.

Luc stepped out from behind his father to help me up. I wiped the tears out of my eyes and could see, up close, that Luc had been crying, too. I looked at the others again. At the unfamiliar dark circles under Stellan's eyes. At the rage in Monsieur Dauphin's.

“Luc?” I whispered.

“The Order attacked my mother on the way home from the ball last night,” he said. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. “She'll pull through. And the baby boy is fine.”

He didn't say anything else, and it hit me. The baby girl was not fine. “Oh, Luc—” I whispered.

With a flick of Monsieur Dauphin's hand, the guards holding Jack bundled him out the door. My eyes swam.

Monsieur Dauphin turned to Luc. “The tailor is waiting for you, son,” he said. “I got you a new suit for your wedding.”

•   •   •

The hard wooden cot was a far cry from the plush mattress on the bed upstairs. I shifted my weight, trying to find a position where it didn't jab into my shoulders or hip bones as I stared up at the ceiling. I'd already been in this cell for a couple hours, and I had no idea how much longer I'd be here.

We'd passed a whole hall of these sparse rooms—probably some kind of servants' quarters—and as soon as they'd left, I'd yelled for Jack, but got no answer. I could only hope my father found us before anything happened.

I stared at the dress hanging on the wall. It was ivory, with a V-neck and a delicate lace overlay. It was beautiful. It made me want to throw up.

Out in the regular world, some girls might see this place, think of the clothes and the balls and the fact that they would be literally in charge of what went on in the world, and sign on the dotted line.

I glanced up at the ironwork across the windows. The Circle might be a beautiful, gilded cage, but it was still a cage. Even before I knew about them, my whole life had been about running from them. They'd taken my past, and now they wanted my future.

On top of it all, if the mandate was fulfilled, if the union happened, I had no idea what would happen to Mr. Emerson. What good were hostages when the ransom didn't matter anymore? And it was unlikely my father was out looking for him if Jack and I were missing.

There was a knock at the door and I bolted upright.

Stellan poked his head in.

“Stellan, please. Let me go.” I jumped up. “I'm not trying to hurt the Dauphins. I promise.”

He scowled. “Here.”

He held out a box. I'd insisted they bring me clear contacts if they were going to make me take mine out. I ripped open the box and popped a contact first in one eye and then the other. I blinked, and the world fell into place again.

Stellan couldn't keep the hint of wonder out of his expression as he watched me. But then he hardened again. “You should have told me. All those times I asked you what you were, and you lied.”

“You would have just turned me in even sooner.” I crossed my arms over my chest, shivering in the pajamas they hadn't given me time to change out of.

“But if I'd known . . . if I hadn't been watching you last night, and I'd stayed with Madame—” Anguish twisted his face, and for one charged second, his hands curled into fists at his sides and I winced away. I realized just as quickly that the anger wasn't directed at me.

“I'm so sorry about what happened to Madame Dauphin, but it is not my fault. And it's not yours either,” I said. He started to protest and I went on. “Madame Dauphin told you to follow me. I heard her, remember? In fact, if I heard correctly, she seemed to be blackmailing you or something.”

“That is none of your business,” he said under his breath. He turned to go.

“Wait,” I said. “Is Jack . . .”

Stellan stopped, his hand on the doorframe. “He's in a cell. Someone will deal with him later.”

Relief filled my chest. I stood up. “How did you know?”

He turned halfway. He was wearing a simple white T-shirt and gray jeans, like the first time I'd seen him in Lakehaven. “Does it matter?”

“Then why
not
tell me?” He must be feeling especially dejected. Normally, he'd jump on the chance to brag about how he caught me.

He sighed. “I saw you talking to the Saxons. I noticed you looked alike, but since you were supposedly a Saxon yourself, I didn't think much of it. Then you mentioned the contact lenses. And I remembered how you were looking at Alistair Saxon, and the pieces just fell into place.”

He spread his hands and turned to go again. “Wait,” I said. There was nothing more Stellan could do to me. If I had any chance of helping Mr. Emerson, I had to tell him the
whole
truth. I stood up from the edge of the cot. “Fitz knows something about the mandate, and the tomb.” Stellan stopped short, and I barged ahead. “That's why the Order took him. He left us clues, including a diary of Napoleon's that talks about everything. The tomb, the mandate, the One. The Order wants to know who the One is, or they're going to kill him.”

Stellan turned, one hand still on the doorknob. “You just said a lot of things that make no sense. The Order's
ransoming
Fitz? Are you talking about
the
tomb?”

“Yes. We'll tell you everything. Let's just go talk to Jack.”

Stellan stepped the rest of the way back inside. “Why would Fitz know anything about the tomb and the One?”

“I have no idea, but he did. And he wanted us to find clues. He left us a note, with photos. Of Jack, you . . . and me.”

Stellan raised his eyebrows, but I plunged ahead. “I knew Fitz, back home. Long story,” I said before he could ask the obvious question.

Stellan's eyes narrowed. “And you expect me to believe this? You've lied to me over and over.”

Footsteps went by outside, and voices speaking French echoed down the hall. I waited, then lowered my voice. “I lied because you would have turned me in to the Dauphins, which you
did.
I'm telling you the truth now.” I realized with a jolt that this was the same thing Jack had told me outside the club in Istanbul, when I trusted him as little as Stellan trusted me right now. It was odd being on the other side.

Stellan shook his head. “I doubt Fitz would leave whatever this is for
me.
He . . . he always liked Jack better.”

I felt a quick pang of sadness for him. At least Jack knew he had Fitz on his side. “Apparently he trusted you with this, too.”

Stellan eased the door closed. “You say Jack has this diary right now?”

“Unless they took it. Just come see. Please. For Fitz. And if that's not enough, you'll want to see the rest of what we found. The stuff about the tomb might be interesting for the Dauphins.”

He hesitated, and I took advantage of it, pushing between him and the door. “We only have until noon to contact the Order, and it's not like I can escape.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I'll go get it from Jack, then, and tell you if I find anything.”

“No!” The diary mentioned something about the union, too. It was a long shot, and Mr. Emerson had said not to tell the Circle, but if we discovered something that could get me out of this wedding, I'd have to take it. For Mr. Emerson, for my mom,
and
for myself. “The three of us should talk through it together, like Fitz wanted. We have to be missing something.” I looked up at him. “You've already ruined my life by turning me in. You owe me this much.”

Stellan pursed his lips. “Okay, but only for Fitz. It'll be hours until the wedding, but they'll be looking me to work soon. I'll give you”—he looked at his watch—“ten minutes. Let's go.”

J
ack was unhurt, sitting on a metal cot, his tux jacket lying beside him. I was so relieved, I almost cried. He jumped up and stared from me to Stellan, eyes bulging when Stellan demanded to see the diary. Jack pulled it out of the jacket.

Stellan glanced through it. “Okay. I need to go make an excuse so no one bothers us. Don't try anything.”

He left, and I fell into Jack's arms.

“Can we trust him?” Jack murmured into my hair. “He turned you in.”

“What other choice do we have? We must be missing something. And if not, we can at least get him to call the Order. Ask for more time.
Something.
”

I felt Jack nod, his chin moving on top of my head.

“I'm assuming they took your phone?” I said. I was sure he would have called Saxon if not.

“Yeah.”

It was colder down here. I shivered, and Jack rubbed my arms. “At least they didn't find the diary.”

“They took my gun and my phone, but they barely looked at the book,” he said. “It's actually lucky we got caught how we did. They didn't suspect there was anything more to it than me taking advantage of the pretty new family member.”

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.