“Of course not.”
But now, Jacen was certain. “He’s lying.”
“Shut them down?” Seth repeated. “The weapons?” He rounded on his father. “If you could stop this, why haven’t you?”
“You refuse to understand!” Avram threw his hands in the air. “It would be a temporary measure. We cannot fight them, youfools.”
That fear in him . . . Its bloody aura suffused the air. He sounded like Akkani.
With a sudden violence that made the old man stumble, Ged seized the High Lord by the wrist. He tore the black ring from Avram’s hand and held it up in front of his nose. “You’re a coward.”
Avram said to Seth, “I should have made you my heir. It might never have come to this.”
But Seth looked like he’d been slapped. Ged demanded, as if Avram hadn’t spoken, “How do I shut the polyhedra down?”
“The system will answer only to me,” Avram said wearily. “My blood. My voice. And I will not worsen my sentence, or yours, by defying the gods.” He glanced at Jacen. “Don’t bother trying to compel me. I can keep you out long enough that it won’t make a difference.”
“There must be a way to transfer control,” said Ged.
Ogden finally spoke. “There’s no time.” He tilted his head, as though straining to hear something. “If we’re going to escape, we have to go now.”
“Where’s Nines?” Jacen asked. It had been far too long since he last saw her.
No one answered. Ged’s focus was fixed on his father—still refusing to speak.
“Die here or follow me to the deepriver,” said Ogden. “I won’t wait long.”
He turned on his heel and stalked back toward the throne. He manipulated a hidden mechanism, like Seth had done in the White Cathedral, and the wall slid aside. He disappeared into the narrow passageway.
“Kheris,” Ged ordered. “Dig it out of his head.”
But Jacen didn’t need to. He could not guess at the specifics, but it seemed rather simple. How, after all, did one High Lord succeed another?
“He has to die,” Jacen said quietly.
He saw the truth of it in Avram’s face, set in grim resignation. Perhaps he didn’t believe his son had the will to murder him for this—or perhaps he thought death would be a mercy.
“Kill me, take me hostage . . . It doesn’t matter,” the High Lord said. “Nothing you do will make a difference.”
Ged’s face twisted. His consciousness was a noxious cloud of pain and rage that drowned out his capacity to act on anything else, boiling over with nowhere to spill—except against the man who stood before him. Jacen realized what Ged meant to do in the seconds before it happened.
Seth knew it an instant later, and had time to say “Don’t—” before Ged drove his sword through their father’s heart.
Avram choked on blood. Ged’s arm was brutally steady as he twisted his blade—the iron determination of a man with nothing left to lose, who knew no choices remained but to stay the course. Through clenched teeth, he said, “I will not let this all be for nothing.”
He let Avram fall.
Slowly, Ged knelt and placed the High Lord’s ring on his own finger. He stared at his blood-soaked hands. “Ilusha knows how to use this,” he muttered, half to himself, half to his brother. “This is not the end.”
As if in a trance, he traced the symbols of rulership on his own forehead. The gestures were so perfect, it occurred to Jacen that he must have practiced it many times. With one last, stricken look at his father’s corpse, Ged ran after Ogden.
With a cry like a wounded animal, Seth fell to his knees and took Avram’s head in his hands.
Jacen touched his shoulder. “We have to go.” Beyond the chamber he sensed others approaching. Butwherehad Nines gone? He desperately scanned the room, as though mere sight might detect what his extradimensional senses had failed to.
“How dare I mourn him,” Seth was saying. He looked up at Jacen, almost pleading. “How dare I mourn him,when what my family has done—if half of what he said is true?—”
Jacen said, “I know.” Guilt, at least, he understood. “But you’re no good to Neri dead.”
