The Spell-Bound Scholar (30 page)

There were also cutpurses and armed robbers and pimps with trains of prostitutes. She learned quickly to be very selective in regard to which thoughts to heed and which to block out.

The Chief Agent's lieutenant assigned her a room and told her when the common room would serve meals, then gave her a moderate amount of money and told her to explore the city, paying particular attention to the houses of the aristocrats, the guardhouses, and all the other government offices. Finister went a little wild exploring, with a young woman several years older who seemed rather cynical but was very friendly. After the first two weeks Finister was assigned marketing trips, then day jobs as a scullery maid—cover, of course, for an opportunity to spy by telepathy. She was surprised at the number of men, young and old, who made advances to her, for she did not consider herself to be at all pretty, and decided to keep a very firm hold on her erotic projections. She managed to deflect all her would-be suitors, though she might not have if any of them had been terribly handsome.

After a month, the Chief Agent himself summoned her. He seemed surprised at her appearance and, for a few seconds, gave her a thorough, searing inspection that made her feel she was being stripped naked. Then he managed to thrust his lust back into safekeeping and assumed an official demeanor as

he scanned a paper on his desk. "Home Agent Finister. You're a telepath."

It was a statement of fact, though he could only have known from the paper he was reading. A single light, quick probe showed her that he wasn't a telepath himself. "Yes, sir, and a projective, too. And telekinetic, of course."

"Yes, most of you girls seem to be." The Chief looked up at her with impassive eyes. "I've had good reports of your first month here, Agent. You seem to have become acclimated to the city quickly and have already brought in several useful bits of information from three noble houses."

"Thank you, sir." Finister still felt rather guarded; certainly she had not yet done anything exceptional.

" 'Finister' is an odd name," the Chief Agent said. "Did your foster parents tell you what it meant?"

"Yes, sir—'land's end.' It was pinned to the basket in which they found me and they couldn't understand why my real mother would have given me such an odd name. They thought it might have been the name of my natural father, but there was no one by such a name in the county."

The Chief Agent nodded. "Possibly a sailor; there are families by that name on the coast, where you would expect it. Of course, you could also translate the name as meaning 'the end of the world.' "

Now Finny blushed. "They did give me a nickname that meant 'the end,' sir, but I'm sure that was only an accident."

"Accident or not, Agent Finister, we expect it to be an omen for the aristocrats and civil servants who cross your path," the Chief Agent said. "Destruction of government begins with destruction of governors, and with your particular gifts, you should be able to disable them emotionally even when you can't kill them physically."

His words gave Finny a frightening rush of elation, of a feeling of power—and of despair, because she knew this was all she was good for. Well, then, she would do it well, she vowed to herself—and she was sure her victims would deserve whatever she gave them.

"This is your first major assignment. M The Chief Agent took another piece of paper from his desk and handed it to

her. ' 'The Marquis of Cromcourt, currently a member of the Queen's Privy Council. He is also an unprincipled scoundrel who has exploited his peasants unmercifully—especially young and attractive women."

Finny stared down at the page, not seeing it, but holding it tightly in both hands, elbows pressed to her body to keep it from shaking. "Am I to assassinate him, sir?"

"First drain his mind of everything he knows about the government's current plans," the Chief Agent said. "Then assassinate him, yes. Revenge his peasants upon him—but leave no signs."

"Yes, sir." Now the paper did shake. Finny's studies had prepared her for this duty, so it did not shock her—but she understood that the only way she would be able to catch the Marquis at a sufficiently vulnerable moment would be to seduce him, or rather, to let him seduce her—which he would surely want to do, if she used her projective power well. She didn't doubt that she would have to submit to his embraces, or even his bed, but since that was all she was good for, what did it matter? It wasn't as though it would be her first time, after all. She felt no compunction about one more such foray. She just hoped he wouldn't be too old or too ugly.

Something of her misgivings must have shown in her face because the Chief Agent's voice softened, becoming sympathetic. "Of course you're frightened. Agent Finister—anybody would be. There is some risk involved in killing a nobleman, after all—but very few of our agents have been caught. You're nervous, too. as nervous as a hunter before he shoots his very first deer. But think of it as slaughtering a pig. In some ways that's exactly what you'll be doing. You may be sure he deserves it."

"Oh. I don't doubt that, sir." Finister said. "I've read about the droit de seigneur and I was thoroughly disgusted."

"So you're equally disgusted by this nobleman and quite ready to stick a knife between his ribs."

"Yes. sir!" Finister nurtured her anger, nurtured the reserve of rage and bitterness that seemed always to be there now at the core of her being.

"Righteous anger. Good, good." The Chief Agent nodded. "But a knife between the ribs would be very likely to see you arrested and executed. Agent Finister. and we'd rather not lose you. It would be much less suspicious if the Marquis's heart simply stopped beating."

She nodded and tried to keep her stomach from turning over. It was. as he had said, very much like slaughtering a pig. and she remembered how frightened and sick she had been the first time she'd had to do that. She knew she would feel the same way again, her first time killing a man—but she knew she would get used to it.

She carried off the assignment quite well, obtaining a position as chambermaid in the Marquis's household, then blushing prettily at his flatten. He was only middle-aged.

fortunately, and still rather good-looking, though with an edge of cruelty that made her quite sure of the lightness of what she was doing. She projected pure sexuality whenever he came near, and sure enough, his flattery became dalliance, furtive kisses and caresses on the back stairs, during which she drank in all the information about the Privy Council's doings. After only two weeks he summoned her to his bedchamber. It was mortifying, but she knew she wasn't worth anything more; she gritted her teeth and went through with it. That made it all the more satisfying when he yawned and went to sleep—and she reached out for his heart with her thoughts and stopped its beating. Then she dressed and slipped out of his room, letting her humiliation and disgust show in response to the guards' ribald remarks. No one would be surprised if she disappeared from the house that night; the Marquis had a reputation for dismissing women as soon as he'd had his way with them. She wasn't there when they discovered that the Marquis had died in his sleep. Instead, she hurried back to headquarters, unnerved and trembling, for her first experience with human death at close quarters had been as shocking as she had known it would be.

The Chief Agent was sympathetic, assigning her light duties again and assuring her she would grow accustomed to the experience.

She did.

A melange of similar assignments followed, some lethal, some not, some only for the gathering of information. There were continual attempts to penetrate the royal castle, but the Queen's telepaths soon detected any agents of their own kind; she barely escaped capture twice. By and large, though, her career blossomed, taking her from one assignment to another, each more important than the last.

She met Orly years later, in the line of duty, but they never talked about their past. Some months after that, she met Su-key, and when they talked about the farm, feelings leaked through Sukey's shield—resentment and anger at Mama for having excoriated her so thoroughly when she'd caught her in the barn with one of the boys. Shocked, Finny made a point of finding Dory and holding a similar conversation—

with similar results. She simmered with anger toward Mama and Papa after that—they had made it sound so horrible, as though she and Orly were the two most deplorable people in the world, when it was really something that happened every year! But she couldn't find them and scold them, of course. She didn't dare. After all, they were Mama and Papa, and if they didn't love her, no one did.

Then followed a catalog of atrocities and disillusionment as Finister began to realize that her SPITE superiors were trying to feather their own nests and competing for promotion and rank with all its perquisites, one of which turned out to be her, and several other of the prettiest female agents. Worse, though they still believed in the rightness of their cause, they had lost faith in its eventual triumph.

Finister had not. She resolved to gain both vengeance for her own exploitation and renewed zeal for the Cause by assassinating her superiors and becoming Chief Agent herself. But she had become cynical enough to strive for material luxuries, just as her bosses did, and finally realized that the perfect revenge on the nontelepaths who had persecuted her and her foster siblings, and on the bosses who had betrayed her by their cynicism and exploitation, would be to marry into the nobility, becoming a Duchess or perhaps even Queen (since the Crown Prince was her own age). Besides, in that way she could work to destroy the aristocracy and the government from inside as well as outside.

So when her boss assigned her to either assassinate Magnus Gallowglass or make sure he would not reproduce, she was fired with zeal to achieve both his plans and her own.

'The swine!" Gregory said, pale-faced and trembling. "To use the love of a child as an instrument to warp her soul!"

"Her foster parents will have much to answer for when this curing is finished," Geoffrey promised him grimly. "The villains!" Cordelia cried. "The caitiff swine!" "Worse," Gwen said, face contorted with disgust. "They bartered affection, they withheld approval, they bound her to servitude by her own heart and debased her self-esteem systematically."

'They reared her to be a prostitute and a killer!" Geoffrey exclaimed. 'That business with teaching her to slaughter animals—'twas all done in such a way as to lead her to slaughtering people!"

"And to encourage her sexuality only to disable it, to twist it in such a way that they could use it, and her, as a weapon!" Cordelia's voice was harsh with bitterness.

"Not to mention the poisoning of her mind," Gwen said, ' 'in teaching her history from only their own biased point of view and excluding all others, let alone facts that might contradict it!"

"People have done that from time immemorial, Mother," Cordelia said angrily.

"Yes, but not so consciously, not with so great an awareness of what they were doing! She has been reared to be a tool, nothing more, and has not been given the slightest chance to develop her own soul, to become an individual in her own right!"

They were all silent for a moment as the words sank in. Then Cordelia ventured, ' 'But we now propose to do so ourselves, do we not? Can you truly cure her, Mother, or only remake her into the image of what we wish her to be?"

Gwen turned to her youngest son. "What say you, earnest lover? Do you wish the woman to become as you dream her to be, or do you wish her to become fully herself and take the risk that she will no longer find you attractive? Perhaps she will even become someone repugnant to you."

Gregory paled again but said firmly, "I wish her to be herself. Then let us discover if I appeal to her, or her to me."

"You might also discover that your great passion has been only illusion," Geoffrey cautioned.

"Then I must know that! I must know the truth so that I can see the world as it really is—and at this moment, she is the world to me! Cure her, Mother, if you can—make her to be her own person and none other's, not even mine!"

"Well said," Gwen told him, and his siblings murmured assent. "I am proud of the son I have reared," she said, then glanced at Geoffrey. "All of them, but never so proud of

Gregory as at this moment. I must have done something right."

"
More than you know," Cordelia said, then suddenly frowned and said reluctantly, "I suppose Finister's foster mother and father did a few things well, too."

"Oh, yes," Gwen said. "They reared her with love and devotion her first few years. Even after that, her home was always a secure refuge—until she was sixteen. But they did so only to assure that she would be able to love, for if she did not, she could not have become so loyal to their cause or have ached so for their approval and feared their censure. Truly the right thing for the wrong reason. They were quite clever in achieving their goals."

Cordelia eyed her with misgiving. "You do not mean they were virtuous people mistaken in their beliefs!"

"Mistaken, aye," Gwen said, "but there is little virtue in corrupting children in the name of a cause. We must confront lies with truth, though. Let me find these two and discover what was truly in their hearts."

Her eyes lost focus and her children were silent, careful not to distract her as her mind sped to the farmhouse Finister remembered—not difficult to find, since she also remembered the route from the farm to Runnymede. They knew Mama was sifting through the memories of the man and woman she found in that house. Cordelia, at least, hoped that her mother would not kill the couple in their sleep, though she did not doubt they deserved it.