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You could almost forget about it entirely.
Now it seemed that Phillip Wilson had been among them, judging from the last line entered on Saturday night. It made sense. His parents had been casualties of
the Wilson riot, and anyone close to him had been taken into custody for their actions. Given how the family had been split apart, most of them had too many problems in their own lives to worry about a child who never made it from the auction house to his new master. Perhaps they thought he’d slipped away on his own. Perhaps they cheered his mischief.
It wasn’t mischief that got him out of his slave’s term, though, a term that would have only lasted a few years after his eighteenth birthday. Now he’d go to work immediately, his body given over to anyone with a few credits, to workborns who wished to take out their frustrations with the highborn on a child.
Phillip would never have been so disdainful of Tristan’s help if he’d known.
Lila wanted to call it in immediately, wanted to rush to his rescue and save him, to save them all. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? If Natalie ran one brothel, she probably ran more. Calling in one location to Shaw would merely drive the others deeper underground. She had to dig deeper into Natalie’s files, and she couldn’t do that until after dinner and the council meeting.
Perhaps not until after she’d found Oskar.
What would Tristan have done if he’d found out before Natalie’s death? Would he have killed her? He didn’t seem that averse to the idea at the warehouse.
The oracle had claimed that Tristan would take to killing.
Was this how it started? A week ago, she wouldn’t have believed it. Reaper’s death still haunted him, and that had been an accident. The Wilson child still weighed on his mind as well, dead in the middle of a riot.
Then again, Tristan had wanted to kill Natalie at the factory for her crimes. He’d always believed that he and his people were locked in some class war against the highborn. That stealing from them wasn’t wrong. That hurting them might not be wrong, either. The idea of casualties had not dissuaded him from planting a bomb at Slack & Roberts.
But hadn’t he changed after the Wilson riot?
What if he hadn’t? What if his misgivings were only temporary? What if he truly thought a highborn deserved death? Would he take the next step now that he had killed once? Would he seek it out? Would he begin to enjoy it?
Lila shook her head. She couldn’t see it happening. Screw the oracle’s vision—she wasn’t about to take to killing, either. She would never kill anyone, not unless she must kill for self-defense, not unless her Colt malfunctioned and she must resort to her boot knife. After all, she would have killed Peter Kruger if she’d had a weapon. She hadn’t wanted to die.
Lila rubbed her lips, watching the seconds tick by on her computer.
With great resolve, she pulled herself up in her seat. She couldn’t beg off the High Council meeting. It just wasn’t done. All judges attended a new family’s proposal, regardless of health. An early slight against Ms. Park might turn the woman into a rival, rather than an ally.
She must spare the hour for the council meeting and for dinner as well. Not going downstairs would only lead to more interruptions later, and she needed to eat, anyway.
Before she left, she wrote a few lines of code to search for more information about Natalie’s brothels, cross-checking the information she’d already found against every address and person on her unculled list of accomplices, the list she had not removed any highborn from.
At least her computer would do something useful during the council meeting.
Lila pulled on a formal uniform and dressed carefully for dinner, dabbing more concealer on her still purple jaw. Then she slowly descended the stairs and entered the dining room. Her family already sat at their places at the table. An artisan had carved a racing pack of wolves into the side. Their howling brethren had also been carved into the legs.
A matching chair had been pushed out beside her brother Shiloh, who wore the golden coat and breeches of a Bullstow graduate and senate intern. It wasn’t often that her brother visited the family, finding his matron far less entertaining than his thousand fathers at Bullstow. It usually took the prime minister’s visit during Family Week to drag him to the compound.
He winked at her as the rest of the family enjoyed their soup.
Senator Dubois had come too, and sat beside his lover. He sent Jewel long glances, her sister a far more beautiful copy of her older sister, with blonde hair and the same large eyes. Whenever Dubois looked away, Jewel did the same to him.
Lila nearly gagged.
In the corner, Alex stood before the hand-painted crimson wallpaper. It was as if her back had been glued to a board, she stood so straight and tall and unnaturally.
Lila took her place beside Shiloh. Her mother had chosen Alex to serve the family dinner for a reason. The move would only escalate matters. She’d push the slave to slip before the family and the prime minister, and have the perfect excuse to cast her aside.
Who would buy Alex at auction now? If she couldn’t behave around the prime minister and had assaulted her best friend, then who would be safe? Besides, everyone knew that she had outlived her usefulness. She’d become a torn-up lottery ticket, a busted toy, useful for nothing except her family’s humiliation. But even that would quickly expire, for after her matron’s execution, there would be no one around to care about Alex. Indeed, everyone in the family had ended up as slaves or criminals or workborn in the end. They probably all blamed Alex, and would enjoy the thought of her humiliation.
If she’d continued as Lila’s friend, then Alex might have been saved. But she’d separated herself from Lila’s good graces, and the chairwoman would press the issue.
At dinner.
This, and many other reasons, was why Lila detested taking meals with her mother. It was never about the damn food.
