“More so than usual. The oracles are disappearing, Lila, but the infernal women won’t discuss it with me.”
“You were just talking to me about jurisdiction? The oracles are sovereign, Father. You have absolutely no recourse if they don’t want you involved. They’ve been taking care of their own for over a thousand years, with the exception of demanding their yearly allowance.”
“It’s not an allowance.”
“My point is that you can’t expect them to let outsiders get involved now. Besides, it’s not exactly a secret that their numbers are declining.”
“No. It’s a fear. It’s a hypothesis. It’s a rumor. We don’t know for sure. Only the oracles do, and I can’t help them if they refuse to discuss the matter.” Lemaire sat back into his chair like a striking cobra. She knew that look. She’d seen it on her father’s face, mid-speech before the senate and mid-fight with her mother.
“I’m sorry, Lila. I’m bringing other issues into our time together. We’ll have dinner when I come into town, just the pair of us. Perhaps we’ll dig up Shiloh after we’re done talking business. I’m the prime minister. They should be able to rustle up an evening pass so that a boy can see his father.” He winked, knowing Bullstow would lift the entire boys’ dormitory if he snapped his fingers and asked for it.
“I’m sure he’d like that.”
“I hope you will as well. This unpleasantness should be over by then.”
“Unpleasantness? Is that what our friend would call it?”
“I know you’re upset, but I won’t apologize for trying to keep my family safe. I never should have dragged you into this business, Lila. I’m sorry for that.”
“Asking me for help is exactly what you should have done. I’ll always do what I can, for you and for Saxony. It’s how you raised me.”
Lila mused on her father’s face, so tired and old this morning, upset that he had brought her into his troubles. While at the same time, her mother demanded that Lila become involved in hers and called it a birthright.
Chapter 6
Lila rubbed her eyes. They’d begun to lose focus after straining at her monitor for so many hours. Lunch had long since come and gone, consisting of a quickly eaten sandwich at her desk. She hadn’t made any further breaks in Zephyr’s identity, and dinner loomed. Given how poorly breakfast had gone, Lila had no desire to share a table with her mother.
She twirled her sapphire ring and checked the messages on her palm, scrolling through a few updates from Commander Sutton and Captain McKinley, as well as a reminder from Commander Fitzgibbons about her upcoming visit to the New Orleans compound.
Lila propped her boots upon her desk and sighed. The season would begin in a month, and her mother would begin a new round of arguments. She’d want Lila to join in the season: to attend the balls and dinner parties, to find an eligible senator, to reverse her birth control, to bed a new beau and bear a daughter. A daydream popped into her head, a lovely daydream of her sneaking from one Randolph compound to another, too busy to attend a single event for the entire season.
But Beatrice Randolph would never accept such a ruse.
The chairwoman had been right about one thing. Very few matrons would have allowed a prime to skip her birthright, not unless the prime was deficient in some way. It had only been a moment’s lapse on her mother’s part that had allowed Lila to duck the responsibility at all.
After Lila had caught a hacker in WolfNet at the age of seventeen, a hacker who had nearly made off with a third of the family’s capital, her mother had thrown a party in her honor. It had been one of the most lavish, expensive affairs that Lila had ever witnessed. The entire Randolph ballroom had been packed with every highborn on the compound. As a crystal chandelier sparkled above them, slaves dressed in immaculate tuxes brought tray after tray of wine and champagne; guests feasted on endless platters of delicate sandwiches, sliced fruits, and sweetened pastries; and everyone danced to lively waltzes, played by a group of white-gloved musicians.
Her mother was shrewd in her opulence. The party showed the family what they could expect after Lila took up the heir’s whitecoat, for hadn’t Lila been given Our Lady of the Light for her fourteenth birthday? Hadn’t she renamed the hospital for the glory of the Randolph family? Hadn’t she built it up and made it the most successful medical facility in all of Saxony?
It didn’t matter that Lila told everyone that the hospital’s success lay mainly with those she had hired to advise her. She hadn’t come up with any ideas of her own; she’d merely sifted through their ideas and picked the direction she liked the most.
They thought Lila modest for such confessions. It made them fawn over her more.
At the end of the night, the chairwoman gathered the crowd and toasted Lila for her business sense, for her computer skills, for her watchfulness. She had promised to give Lila a reward. Did she want the rarest of antique cars? A large-eyed puppy with a champion’s pedigree? A month-long vacation to an island paradise? A closet full of new clothes designed by Madame Thayer? Did she dream of a new heir’s mansion built for her and her alone?
Her mother raised her glass, her silvercoat and crimson dress flowing about her, her diamond necklace twinkling in the dim light, waiting. So beautiful. So happy.
So proud.
“No, madam,” Lila answered, her voice as bold as she could make it.
“I wish to abdicate my position as prime and join the militia.”
Half the musicians stopped playing at once due to surprise. The others hadn’t heard Lila’s words and continued on, falling out of time when they realized something had gone horribly wrong.
Silence soon devoured the ballroom.
No one breathed, least of all Beatrice Randolph. The pair stared at one another, poker hands clutched to their breasts, the chairwoman’s eyes burning with rage that Lila would dare ask such a thing before the entire family.