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“I don’t see what this has to do with the rune.”
“Do you not? The test will be of combat, as is traditional.”
A lightbulb came on. “So whoever has the rune will be automatically among the winners.”
“Yes.”
“That’s too simplistic,” Marlowe said, sitting up. It looked like he’d decided to join the conversation, after all. I guess since Mircea was already spilling the beans, there was no reason to keep quiet. “It would have been little use in battle—its designated function—were its energy easily depleted.”
“You think it could be used again,” I said, seeing where this was going.
“And again and again!” He flopped back against the seat, his expression dour.
“Giving whoever controls it the possibility of also controlling the outcome of the entire contest,” Mircea said more calmly.
“But Ming-de is already the head of a Senate,” I said, getting a very bad feeling suddenly. “She has no reason to join yours.”
“She doesn’t want to join it,” Marlowe said savagely. “She wants to control it.”
“That is, perhaps, overstating things somewhat,” Mircea said soothingly. But it didn’t look like his voice tricks worked on Marlowe, either.
“The hell it is.” He sat up, talking with his hands in that very un-English way of his. “At most, there is perhaps one open Senate seat a century, among all the Senates around the world,” he told me. “Whenever one does come open, competing Senates always try to get one of their people—someone loyal to them, that is—in it, to give them eyes and ears into what their rivals are doing.”
I nodded. I’d never really thought about it—high politics weren’t my usual purview—but it made sense. Vampires invented paranoid; of course they’d want to keep an eye on the competition.
“And yet now, suddenly, there are five. Five seats open, all at once, on the same Senate! It gives an unprecedented opportunity for her to re-form our Senate from the ground up, undermining our sovereignty, and turning our consul into little more than her puppet!”
“So Ming-de wanted the rune to help make certain that her candidates won their fights, and therefore limit your selection of new senators to people loyal to her,” I deciphered.
“Yes.”
“But even say she somehow managed to fill all five seats, that still won’t give her a majority.”
“But it will give her a powerful faction,” Mircea told me, before Marlowe could go on another rant. “And the ability to sway others or to bog us down in constant grid-lock should we ignore her ‘requests.’ ”
“And the other names Ray gave us? Are they trying to do the same thing?”
“I do not know about the mage’s involvement. But Geminus is on our Senate, in a rival faction to my own. The ability to place his people in the empty seats would give him the upper hand.”
“That’s why you asked me if I’d seen Louis-Cesare,” I said, a few pieces suddenly fitting together. “You want him to fill one of your empty seats.”
“With the emphasis on ‘was,’ ” Marlowe said sourly. “He promised to switch Senates a month ago, then promptly ran off chasing Christine. The challenges drew close, and we had heard nothing, not a word. And then, when he finally did surface, it was to become implicated in something like this.”
“Will this disqualify him?”
“Ki
lling another senator? Oh, no,” Marlowe said, waving a hand. “They’ll give him a bloody medal, won’t they?”
“He didn’t do it, Marlowe.”
“A fact that matters not at all, considering that the judge in the case is the very consul he’s planning to desert.”
“Anthony knows?”
Mircea sighed. “Louis-Cesare insisted on telling him. He did not feel it would be honorable to do otherwise.”
“I can’t do anything with the man,” Marlowe said in disgust. “I truly can’t.”
