I stare at him. The room seems to fall into a hole. “What did you steal?”
“Equations. Plans. Schemes for building devices and power plants. Everything I could see or read on a spirit walk and then copy down later on the subject of elemental energy,” the shaman said in a dull voice. “It took decades. And it turns out it’s much easier to build bombs with this kind of energy than it is to build a power plant, like I’d originally hoped.” He swipes a weary hand across his face. “I started stealing to find another power source for the Outlanders so we could drag ourselves out of poverty. So we could have electricity and build cities of our own—anything to sever our dependence on the witches who treated us like we were less than human. I didn’t mean for them to turn it into a bomb.” He turns his eyes on me, pleading. “You believe me, don’t you? I never meant for them to make bombs.”
My hand shoots out and I slap him, trying to knock the words back into his mouth. It doesn’t work, but I slap him again anyway. He takes my wrists in his hands, gently pushing my arms down.
“If that would help, I’d gladly let you beat me to death,” he says.
“Who else knows?” I demand, my voice low and shaky. “Who have you told?”
“For years I’ve been giving all the numbers and drawings to a woman of my people who understands them. Her name is Chenoa Longshadow.”
“Professor Longshadow?” I say, nearly shouting. “Head of the department of Fundamental Laws of Nature at my college?”
“She’s been using your laboratories, your resources, and your students at the school to develop what I’ve stolen. She has two students in particular—acolytes, really.”
“Who are they?” I ask, my lips twisting into a snarl.
“I don’t know their names. Alaric keeps the particulars compartmentalized—even from us who are most involved. We each just know bits. All I know is that Chenoa has two students who’re special. They know everything she knows, just in case something happens to her.”
I’d never interfered with the science department at my college, and in fact, I’d never even met Chenoa. Never toured her labs. Never took the time to concern myself with anything except student enrollment. I thought it was my job to bring as many of the disenfranchised to my school as possible, and to fight for their right to an education before the Council and in the Coven. The actual schooling I left to the professors.
“I trusted them to teach,” I say feebly.
“She did teach. She taught Outlanders to hate the Covens,” he says. “And for the past two years she’s been using your money and your laboratories to make and store parts of the bombs.”
“But I was trying to help.” My eyes dance around frantically, not really seeing anything. “How could they?”
“Did you really think one little school was going to erase centuries of injustice?” he asks, an eyebrow raised. “Too many Outlanders have watched their children starve to death or die in the mines or be torn apart by the Woven for too long. That kind of bone-deep hatred doesn’t just disappear because one witch builds a school.”
I’ve never felt such a weight pressing down on me. I feel so sick I’d vomit again if there were anything left in me but bile.
“I won’t let her,” I whisper.
“How can anyone undo what’s already been done?” The shaman shakes his head sadly. “The only way to stop the Outlanders now is to give them another way to get rid of the Woven. If we do that, I know Alaric will abandon elemental energy.”
“Alaric Windrider? The sachem who has sworn to destroy me?” I say incredulously.
“He’s not a madman,” the shaman insists.