The two men and a boy immediately stood up.
“Why did you get up?” she asked George.
“You’re a woman,” George answered.
“Yes, but what is the reason?”
“I don’t know.”
“You rose because hundreds of years ago, when a woman entered a room full of men, she wasn’t exactly safe. Especially if she was beautiful or had holdings. Our magic is just as deadly, but physically, an average male is stronger than an average woman, so when a woman entered the room, men who knew her stood up to indicate that they would shield her from danger. The three of you just declared yourself my protectors.”
They looked at her.
“A modern woman is hardly in danger of a direct assault,” Charlotte said. “So why do men still get up?”
George frowned.
Charlotte smiled at Kaldar. “You know, don’t you?”
“We get up because women like it.” Kaldar clapped George on the shoulder. “You don’t want to look like an unmannered bumpkin in front of a girl. And if you get up and she notices you, she might sit by you.”
“Exactly. There is no law that says men should rise, but you still do because women enjoy this show of attention. It’s so ingrained in your nature that when we first met, Richard refused to sit down until I did, even though he was half-dead at the time.”
Richard cleared his throat. “That’s a wild exaggeration. I was a quarter-dead, at most.”
Kaldar swiveled toward him and peered at his brother’s face. “That’s two jokes in less than an hour. You feeling all right?” he asked quietly. “Feverish, eh?”
“I’m fine. Get out of my face.”
Kaldar looked at her, then back at Richard, then at her again.
Charlotte sat down. The three men sat.
“The monarchy survives because the bluebloods like it,” she said. “Most Adrianglians like it. It’s an idea that appeals to them on some level. The king has less power than the collective Assembly or the Council, for example, so he can be overthrown. But we like to pretend we’re still a warrior nation under a single strong leader, and we idealize the throne and those who sit on it.”
“Or stand close,” Richard added.
“The bluebloods don’t fear laws,” she continued. “Some of us still think they don’t apply to us. We fear only public judgment. The public has judged the royal family to be paragons of virtue. We can’t fight that, or we’d have to rub the blueblood noses in the fact that their long bloodlines don’t bestow them with nobility of spirit the moment they pop out of their mothers.”
Richard nodded. “The bookkeeper on the island is a prime example—she was so committed to Brennan, her eyes practically glistened at the thought of him. In her mind, he could never do anything base.”
Their minds ran on parallel tracks. “We can’t fight the system,” Charlotte agreed. “But we can tarnish one individual. To crush the slaver ring, we have to get Brennan to admit to an act so base, so at odds with the standard of blueblood behavior, that society will have no choice but to judge him as defective. He will be viewed as a freak, unworthy of his pedigree. Anything he engaged in would become unclean. The bluebloods will destroy him just to escape the taint.”
“I like the way you think,” Kaldar said.
Richard nodded. “I agree. The public disdain and disgust must be so severe that it would cause a cry of outrage. The slave owners must recognize that being discovered would make them instant social pariahs. That’s the only way the institution of slavery can be rooted out.”
Richard rose and walked to the board. “Brennan built this organization. He made it efficient, resilient, and profitable. We don’t know why. He doesn’t need the money, and if it ever became public, he’d lose everything. Something must’ve compelled him to create it. He cares a great deal about it. When we fought the Hand, we suffered setback after setback, but we didn’t break until the end.”
A muscle jerked in Kaldar’s face. “Erian.”
The half brother Richard had mentioned. “I don’t understand,” Charlotte said.
“Our youngest brother betrayed the family to the Hand,” Kaldar said.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared,” Richard said.
“Richard let him go,” Kaldar told her. “He saw Erian walking away, and he let him go. We’ll all regret this one day, mark my words.”
“Back to Brennan. We make him think he’s being betrayed,” Richard said. “Make him think there is a coup and one of the others is trying to take over. It will drive him over the edge.”
“You’ll need at least two people for that,” Kaldar said. “A single person stirring up trouble is too easy to trace. You need at least two people pretending to act independently. And you’re right out, my dear brother, because your mug has by now reached Brennan’s desk.”
“I can do it,” Charlotte said. “They don’t know me. I don’t even have to pretend to be anyone but myself.”