I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.
“But you can understand, can’t you, that your accident threatens the whole system? Do you have any idea how many unhappy vamps are out there?”
I swallowed. “You think I can expect a stampede to my door?”
“With their masters in tow?” Jules asked archly, and then saw my face. “No. But only because most vamps have a serious superiority complex. There are plenty of unhappy vamps, but that doesn’t mean they want to revert to what they view as an inferior species. It would be like a human hating his life and deciding to become a dog. Most want a better master, or more power and status than they already have.”
I leaned my head against the cool marble behind me. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not, to be told I might not have to worry about a problem I hadn’t known I had. Not when another one was staring me in the face.
“So this is my fault?” I asked. “The consul and Mircea?”
“No. As I said, it always goes this way. It’s the way their world works, and one reason I’m pretty sure I’m better off out of it. But you may have . . . sped things up a little.”
“A little?”
“Like a century or so,” he admitted. “And that was just last night.”
“Last night?” I looked at him, confused again.
“How quickly they forget.” He smiled. “Did you or did you not fight some kind of crazy time duel right here last night?”
“You saw that?”
“No. But again, rumors. So somebody saw it. Probably Marlowe,” he added, talking about the consul’s chief spy. “You know they call him Argus, right? Like the old monster with the hundred eyes . . . Anyway, from what I hear, they got a good, up-close look at exactly what a Pythia can do in a duel. And you do know how consuls are chosen? In a duel?”
I stared at him, unable to even feel surprise anymore. “She thinks I’d help Mircea against her?”
“I told you, I don’t know. But the fact is, you could. You could stop time on her, and she’d never even know it. You could negate all her abilities, without breaking a sweat, and have her dead before she could blink—”
“I’m not going to do that!”
“And I’m sure hearing that from you would make her feel so much better,” Jules said sarcastically.
I massaged my temples. It didn’t feel nearly as good as when Mircea did it. “She saw me duel a Spartoi,” I said, talking about the hideous half-dragon sons of Ares. “Why didn’t she freak out then?”
“Maybe she did. I’m not privileged to her thoughts, just the grapevine. But I saw what happened, and with all the trees and hills in the way, nobody got a great view. Plus, it was all over so fast . . . it mostly looked like he underestimated you, and you got lucky.”
“Which is pretty close to the truth.”
“Yeah, but then you got lucky again last night, and again this morning. You see how it goes. How long until it’s not looking so much like luck anymore, or no more than anyone needs in a duel? That Spartoi might have underestimated you; I’m not sure she does anymore.”
“So she’s taking this out on him?”
Jules shrugged. “She needs you.”
“She needs him, too!”
“For now. But if he was to die tragically in battle, say near the end of the war, after doing most of what she wanted . . .”
My jaw clenched.
“I’m not saying that’s what she has planned. Maybe she just wants an experienced commander, someone she can trust, in charge. After all, she had to appoint someone. But I find it a little interesting that the day after she gets an eyeful of exactly what you can do in a duel, Mircea is suddenly looking at a new position.”
Yeah. So did I.
Chapter Thirty-four
The crowd hadn’t thinned when we emerged. Not surprising. Four a.m. is the equivalent of five o’clock rush hour for vamps, when they’re hurrying to finish up business before dawn comes along and spoils the fun. We rejoined the throng on the main concourse.
“So, what’s the senate doing in the basement?” I asked, because I figured that was a safe subject. And because I wanted to know.
“Beats me,” Jules said. “They’ve been even more secretive than usual and I’m a mere mortal now.”
“You seem to know a lot for a mere mortal.”
He threw me a grin. “People always said that I like to gossip too much. But, you know, it’s strange.”
“What is?”
“Now that I’m not a vamp anymore, people tell me things. Like the human servants. They never used to gossip in front of me, but all of a sudden, I’m one of the club. And the vamps—even guys I know—talk like I’m not even there. You’d think I suddenly became invisible.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to talk here, for obvious reasons. But the fact was, for a clairvoyant, I was tragically uninformed. I needed info to do my job, but I always seemed to be the last to know everything.
It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at first, when it felt like I already had too much to learn. But now what I’d said to Rosier kept coming back to haunt me. There was so much I needed to know, just so much, and not all of it was protocol. I needed help.
I needed my own Argus.
Or, at least, a guy who really, really liked to gossip.
“What?” Jules said, and I realized I was still looking at him.
“We’ll talk later.”
He seemed to accept that, probably because ducking into another alcove, assuming we could find one, might look a little weird. Or because we’d just turned off the impressive main corridor, where the marble floors and walls had reflected the moonlight into some semblance of ambient lighting, and entered a dark stairwell. Very dark.
The only relief came from massive standing candelabras, old and brassy and dripping with wax, which kept me from being completely blind. But they were spaced pretty far apart, just spreading a thin sheen over the gloom on either side, that didn’t quite meet in the middle. Vampires probably didn’t notice, but it left me straining to see anything but jumping shadows.
And babies, because, now that I was looking for them, they were everywhere.
Flinching as they passed through the power fields shed by higher-level vamps. Mouthing replies to mental communications, like they were talking on an invisible Bluetooth. Tripping on carpet and running into walls because they couldn’t see any better than me. Staring in awe at nothing visible, but probably at the auras vamps were said to give off, which acted like a signboard telling you family affiliation, rank, past masters, and a cornucopia of other information.
All of which had to be kind of overpowering to the uninitiated.
They looked like what they essentially were, a bunch of toddlers roaming around in search of a clue.
So what were they doing here?
“Substituting,” Jules said, when I asked.
“Substituting for what?”
“For whatever all the older guys are doing.”