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He smiled at her. “I’m hardly going to crumble due to a few unjust attitudes. But I grew curious enough to try going directly to the law keepers’ hall myself.”
Gia raised her eyebrows. “That was bold. What did Miro have to say for himself?”
“I don’t know, since I wasn’t permitted inside.”
“What?” Amara straightened. “That can’t be right. Law keepers’ halls are required to be open and available for all to enter so that anyone can lodge a complaint.”
“Officially, yes,” Hayes said. “But who’s going to reprimand them for not following the rules when Tarona has stopped sending senior visitors from the central law keepers’ hall? From the state of things at the gate, Miro feels a similar fear to the king himself. He’s created his own little fortress at the Eldridan law keepers’ hall.”
“That’s one possibility,” I murmured, hoping Hayes was right.
“Are you going to tell us the other possibility now?” Nik asked.
I took a deep breath. I had been hoping the others would dispel my fears, but instead their information had only strengthened my concern.
“I’ve been uncomfortable about something ever since we talked in the crevasse,” I said. “I thought about it all the way here to Eldrida, and even so, I couldn’t quite make sense of our theory about Grey’s plans.”
“What theory do you mean?” Hayes’s tone was respectful, and he was obviously taking my concerns seriously which only put me more on edge.
“Everyone has been talking as if all Grey needs to do is get access to court, and he’ll be able to take over the government and throne—like a puppet master in the background.”
“Is that not the case?” Gia’s eyes were fastened on my face with almost painful intensity. “That’s the impression I had. Can’t he use his mesmerizations to control someone’s mind?”
“Yes and no. It’s not that simple.” I paused as I tried to work out the best way to describe it. “Mesmerizations aren’t about controlling someone’s mind. They’re about lies and truth. Of course lies can be used as a vehicle to control someone, but there are significant limits—in particular that it won’t last if the lie can be disproved. Just look at the island. It took an entire family of mesmerizers to keep one town subjugated, and even then they couldn’t manage it completely. Isolde is a perfect example of the sort of limits I mean—and she was someone who’d been shaped by their lies since birth.”
“Isolde?” Renley asked.
“Costas’s mother,” I explained. “Everyone thought she was dead, but it turns out she was in hiding, leading a sort of passive resistance.” I briefly explained her story. “They told her a lie and ordered her to do something in line with that lie. But instead of compelling her to act according to their wishes, their order broke the mesmerization completely.”
I tried to think of another example. “Take what the Triumvirate did to Nik. Imagine that Grey was there and had mesmerized both the Triumvirate and the king into believing Nik was a danger to Tartora. That lie would be enough to have them skip Nik in the line of succession in favor of Evermund—we know it’s possible for them to act that way because they did it. But what if Grey said that since Nik’s such a danger, King Marius should have him killed?”
“Father would never do that,” Gia said with confidence. “Nik is his son, and he loves him.”
I smiled at her, hoping Nik was hearing her words and believing them.
“Exactly,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what lies he tells the king, Grey couldn’t compel him to kill his own son. And Nik’s behavior would soon disprove the original lie, thus breaking the entire mesmerization. There are a hundred traps like that, situations where someone won’t react to the lie as intended or where something unforeseen breaks the mesmerization.”
“Grey could still cause a lot of damage and chaos,” Renley said.
I nodded. “He could, of course, but what would be his motive? That’s the part that had me confused all the way across the desert. As a single individual, he would have to work incredibly hard and incredibly carefully just to maintain a position that would always be insecure. And the attempt would be infinitely harder now that the court is on high alert. Everyone must be afraid of doing anything the least out of character in case others think Grey has gotten to them.”
“He might just want to destroy Tartora,” Gia said. “From what you’ve said, he destroyed his own family—and nearly their whole community along with them—and ended up with no personal benefit from it.”
As little as I wanted to speak up for Grey in any matter, I couldn’t accept the likelihood of her suggestion.
“Grey doesn’t have any reason to destroy Tartora,” I said. “On the island, he had a personal vendetta against the family who killed his father and caused his and his mother’s exile. I dislike Grey as much as anyone—I’m the only one here who’s experienced the stomach-churning reality of his mesmerizations—but he isn’t some well of endless evil. He’s motivated by his own advantage, and I just can’t see how destroying the kingdom he wants to live in would be advantageous.”
“He might plan to topple everything so he can take over and rebuild from the ashes,” Nik said.
I shook my head. “Some people might want that,” I said, “if their primary motivation is seeking power. But I don’t think that’s what Grey wants the most.”
“You don’t think he wants power?” Hayes sounded unconvinced.
“I think he wants adulation,” I said, “which is similar, but not quite the same thing. If he seized power in the situation Nik described, he would hardly become a beloved leader—not when the majority of people would be beyond his ability to mesmerize.”
“So you think we’ve all been focused on the wrong thing,” Amara said. “You don’t think he’s planning to make a move on the throne at all. You think he has something else in mind.”
I nodded. “Grey told me a lot of lies to start with, but on his final night on the island—when he realized I’d found a way to break his mesmerizations—his mask dropped, and he admitted a number of truths. In particular, he revealed his greatest grievance against his mother, which seemed to be the source of all his bitterness. Grey wanted back the life she had stolen him away from—not a life where he was head of a vast kingdom, but one he described as a life of luxury, living like a prince among the island’s rulers.”
