“And yet,” Jonah said, “when I asked why we weren’t targeting the wizards who caused so much misery, you preferred to finish the job they began at Thorn Hill.”
“Hear me out, then maybe you’ll understand,” Gabriel said. He took a deep breath, then continued. “Given the nature of our gifts, some of us—mostly sorcerers—had begun to realize that there was no way we would ever prevail. The fight was too one-sided. We wanted to change that. We wondered whether it might be possible to strengthen ourselves in ways that wizards could not counter. The biggest wizard advantage was conjury. It was so flexible, so nuanced, so versatile, that we had no defense against it. We thought, what if we could develop Anawizard Weir who resisted conjury? Wouldn’t that be a huge advantage?”
Gabriel leaned forward in his seat, eyes alight with enthusiasm. In him, Jonah saw the vestiges of the young sorcerer who believed that sorcery could solve every problem. “So we brainstormed, assuming that anything was possible. For instance, another advantage that wizards have is that they are so long-lived. What if we could make ourselves immortal? If it came to a fight, what if our healers could heal wounds in new ways? What if they could look right into a client and identify the disorder without scans or surgeries?”
What if we had warriors who were savvy, amazingly strong, agile, and quick to heal? Lilith put in. What if we had assassins who could kill painlessly, kindly, even pleasurably? If you’re planning on going to war, wouldn’t that be an advantage?
For a long moment, Jonah’s throat locked up, and he couldn’t force any words out. “Did you ever think of the person who had to do the killing?”
The two sorcerers looked at each other, as if each hoped the other one would speak up. Neither volunteered.
“Tell me about Thorn Hill,” Jonah said, once it was clear that no answer was forthcoming. “How did that get started?” He didn’t want to listen to a pitch for genetic engineering, especially since he had to live with the results.
“We knew we were taking a risk,” Gabriel said. “We knew what happened to members of the Weirguilds—even wizards—who conspired against the regimes in power. Leander Hastings, for instance. Because Hastings was a well-known subversive element, he was constantly on the run. As was Linda Downey, who, of course, had to hide her identity in order to protect her family. But we couldn’t do the hit-and-run-type thing. We needed time to do our research in a protected environment, to trial therapies and evaluate results. But the Roses had spies everywhere. And we needed resources to fund our research.
“So I bought the property in Brazil. The mines were already operating. I had a diverse portfolio, so nobody questioned it. The mines provided income to support the commune, to build the labs we needed, to develop agriculture so that we could be self-sustaining.”
“Where did Lilith come in?” Jonah asked.
“I recruited her,” Gabriel said. “She came highly recommended. I was told that she was the most talented sorcerer of this generation. I believed it.”
Because it was true, Lilith said.
“I knew she had a rather shady background—”
If you wanted somebody with my experience, Lilith said, it wouldn’t be someone unsullied by contact with wizards.
“What kind of expertise were you looking for?” Jonah asked, wary of the answer.
“Lilith had been working for wizards to research methods of modifying Weirstones,” Gabriel said.
“Why would wizards be interested in that?” Jonah opened his stance a bit, resting his hands on the back of a chair, preparing for a lie or a long story. “It seems like they already have every advantage.”
Oh, they had no intention of experimenting on themselves, Lilith said. Then looked at Gabriel, as if to encourage him to carry on.
“You’re aware that the wizard houses have a long history of holding tournaments between warriors and gambling on the result,” Gabriel said. “They mimicked racehorse owners, always looking to breed a stronger, more bloodthirsty warrior. But selective breeding in humans takes a long time to achieve, especially given the fact that there was and is a real shortage of warriors, because most of them have been killed off. So it occurred to some wizards that it might be possible to genetically engineer warriors who would be impossible to defeat. Or modify the Weirstones of members of the other guilds to turn them into warriors.”
A memory came back to Jonah, of the swordplay demonstration in Trinity, when Ellen had called Jack Swift a “mongrel.” “Is that what happened to Jack Swift?”
Lilith shook her head. As I understand it, that was a surgical procedure. Really risky, and it still requires finding a warrior stone. My employers thought it might be possible to use treatments to gradually change, say, a sorcerer Weirstone into a warrior stone, or at least one that was close enough to fool a stone reader. If, at the same time, it was possible to enhance the warrior’s fighting capability, even better.
“So you have a long history of experimenting on unwilling subjects,” Jonah said, allowing his bitterness to show through.
Unwilling sorcerer, unwilling subjects, Lilith said. I hated it. So when Gabriel contacted me with a proposal, I was immediately intrigued. Not only would it provide a means of escaping the situation I was in, it might mean freedom for all of the Weirguilds.
“At least you meant well,” Jonah said. “Everybody makes mistakes.”
That’s the point—I did not make a mistake, Lilith said.
“But you were still experimenting on unwilling subjects,” Jonah said, looking from one to the other.
“Don’t make assumptions until you know the facts,” Gabriel snapped.
“What a shame, then, that nobody has told me the facts up to now,” Jonah said.
“Our subjects were volunteers,” Gabriel said.
“I don’t remember volunteering.”
We began with adults, Lilith said. We actually had to turn people away.
“You had to turn people away,” Jonah repeated. “So—everyone wanted to be Spider-Man?”
“Imagine that you are enslaved by a self-styled superior race,” Gabriel said. “Consider that the disparity in power was so great that you had no hope of throwing off the yoke on your own.”
“And yet it happened,” Jonah said.
“The end of that story isn’t written yet,” Gabriel said. “Don’t count wizards out too soon. They always find a way to win. Anyway, hindsight is twenty-twenty. As I was saying—wouldn’t it be tempting to take a chance on a treatment that might set you free? That might allow you to take revenge on your oppressor?”
And so we set up our lab, recruited our volunteers, and the research began, Lilith said. But we soon found that our treatments didn’t work well on adults. That was consistent with my previous research as well. Apparently, the therapies work best on stones that are biologically active, growing and developing, so that a new matrix can be laid down that reflects the desired profile.
“So...you recruited kids?”
“Parents volunteered their children,” Gabriel said. “Again, imagine if you could offer your children a better life.”
“My parents volunteered me and Kenzie and Marcy?” Jonah’s stomach twisted. “They said, ‘Go ahead, experiment on our children’?”
“Those weren’t the words they used, but yes. They were involved in the planning and decision-making process. They were members of the governing council of the collaborative.”
Jonah felt cut loose, set adrift by these revelations. Like most orphans, he’d put his dead parents on a pedestal. Had created in his imagination the kind of life he would have had if they’d survived. Another daydream exploded, reduced to ash. He could almost taste it on his tongue.
“What did you do to us?” Jonah asked. “Gamma rays? Radioactive spiders? Gene splitting? Alien sex?”
Lilith flinched a little. I compounded potions designed to enhance and e
xpand native capabilities in the gifted by modifying their Weirstones.
“That sounds so much better than ‘We did random experiments on helpless children,’” Jonah said.
It was all science based, Lilith said. I’d been working in that field for years. I was the foremost expert in the world.
“That’s what she told me,” Gabriel said, with a sidelong look at Jonah.
“Did everybody get the same stuff?”
She shook her head. It was formulated individually based on what guild the subject belonged to and an individual assessment and treatment goals.
“When you say ‘treatment goals,’ did you try to remake people to fit into a slot, or did you go with—”
Jonah, Lilith said. We never meant to do you harm. I don’t know if there’s any way to convince you of that, but—
“It sounds to me like thousands of people knew exactly what you were up to at Thorn Hill,” Jonah said. “How did you hope to keep it a secret?”
“Volunteers were required to agree to memory modification,” Gabriel said. Seeing Jonah’s expression, he said, “We had no choice.”
“So people volunteered, and volunteered their children, and then you erased the memory of that, so they had no idea what was being done to them as it progressed? Must’ve been tempting to just skip the volunteer part.”
“There was no need for that, since we had so many volunteers.” Gabriel sighed in exasperation. “They signed informed consent forms. Would it have been more acceptable to you if we’d imprisoned people at Thorn Hill after the project began to prevent word from leaking out?” Gabriel seemed to be regaining his usual confidence. He was the kind of person who always landed on his feet. “We wanted people to have the freedom to come and go without compromising the project.”
“Just not the freedom to make informed decisions,” Jonah said. “And all of this was strictly for self-defense? Since when is assassination a defensive weapon?”
“It can be, used judiciously,” Gabriel said.
“You’re saying there were no plans for a frontal assault on the Wizard Guild some time down the road?” Jonah persisted.
Gabriel looked away. “In any large group of people, there will be differing philosophies and agendas,” he said. “There were some among us who believed that the only way to convince wizards to leave us alone was to make them pay a blood price. Who favored creating an army of savants and assassins, to be called Nightshade.”
“Catchy name,” Jonah said. “What about you, Gabriel? Where did you fit on that continuum?”
“That’s not important,” Gabriel said.
“It’s important to me,” Jonah said. “You were the one who bought the property, who established the commune, who hired Lilith to brew up her potions. What did you intend?”
Gabriel stared straight ahead for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his jaw. Then he looked up at Jonah without a trace of apology. “I intended to go to war,” he said.
Jonah cocked his head. “You...you meant to hurt them enough to convince them to leave us alone? To demonstrate that we could defend ourselves?”
Gabriel smiled, a hard-edged bitter smile without a trace of amusement in it. “I intended to hunt down and destroy every last member of the Wizard Guild. I intended to extinguish that genetic line.”
Jonah staggered back a step, wrapping his arms around himself, feeling as if he’d taken a serious punch to the gut. “Wh-what?” he choked out.
“Consider this, Jonah,” Gabriel said, briskly, as if referencing an argument he’d made many times. “From the very beginning, from the founding of the guilds in Dragon’s Ghyll, from that original betrayal, wizards have never swerved from their purpose: to gain power by oppressing others. It’s gone on for centuries. I believe the desire for power is built into the matrix of their stones. They cannot change, and we can’t live with that any longer.”
Jonah’s skin pebbled as he broke into a cold sweat. “DeVries was right,” he whispered. “DeVries was right all along.”
“What did you say?” Gabriel asked, though Jonah was sure he’d heard.
“Rowan DeVries. He claimed that Thorn Hill was conspiring against the Wizard Guild, that it was a nest of terrorists, and they died of a self-inflicted wound. I told him he was wrong.”
He is wrong, Lilith cut in. About that last part, anyway.
You wanted the truth, Jonah thought. Be careful what you wish for.
“So.” Jonah extended his hands, palms up. “Lilith says I’m a spectacular success. A success at what? What was my role supposed to be?”
“Whatever I intended, it didn’t work out,” Gabriel said, shrugging as if to dismiss the question.
Jonah slammed the chair aside so that it hit the floor with a clatter. “No,” he growled, gripping the front of Gabriel’s leather jacket and lifting him, chair and all, off the floor. “Don’t think you can put me off with a pat on the head this time.”
“Jonah!” Gabriel cried, staring down at Jonah’s ungloved hands, his face shiny with sweat. He struggled once again to free his arms.
Jonah! Lilith cried. Put him down. We need him. Enough knowledge died at Thorn Hill.
Jonah took a deep breath. Let it out. Set Gabriel down.
I knew this would happen, Lilith murmured.
Jonah whirled on her. “Why? Because the two of you created a monster?”
You were meant to be a weapon, not a monster, Lilith said. The keystone of our defense. A physically gifted predator who could adapt to multiple situations. Who could go unarmed into secure facilities and come away with a kill. Someone with acute hearing, vision, and sense of smell. Someone so physically strong that you would prevail in any physical fight, and so beautiful and charming that no one would ever question your intentions.
“Someone who could kill his little sister with a kiss,” Jonah said, feeling oddly hollow, as if even his most painful wounds had lost their ability to torment him.
No. Lilith took a step toward Jonah. That was not part of it. That was not our doing. Why would we create someone who kills accidentally?
“So you’re saying that you had nothing to do with the fact that your assassin has a killing touch?”
Gabriel and Lilith looked at each other, radiating mingled guilt and deception.
“If you wanted to get away with lying to me,” Jonah said, “you shouldn’t have created an empath.”
“All right,” Gabriel said. “That was part of the build. But it was meant to be a weapon, not a curse. You were supposed to be able to turn it on and off at will.”
“Whose will?”
“Yours,” Gabriel said.
“Oops,” Jonah said. “You want credit for my uncanny good looks and my remarkable grace and skill with weaponry, but not for—for this.” Jonah held up his bare hands.
Lilith and Gabriel said nothing, like parents who don’t know what to do with their tantrumming child.
Jonah wished he could bring the other shadeslayers in, and let them listen to these revelations directly. But he was afraid that it would turn into a melee.
“There’s something I don’t get, though,” Jonah said. “Why just one of me? While you were at it, why not create an army?”
You must understand, we were in the beginning stages of our research, Lilith said. We did not know what the possibilities and limitations were. Some therapies didn’t turn out the way we expected, and it often took years to find that out. If we’d had a tested protocol from the beginning, we might have been able to create an army of Jonahs. As it was, you were the best candidate and the best outcome in the military trials.
“So what with all this trial and error, you don’t think you could have messed up and poisoned us? Assuming that you didn’t intend to kill thousands of people.”
“You’ll have to ask Lilith,” Gabriel said. “I wasn’t there.” r />
How many times do I have to say this—I did not make a mistake. Even without the benefit of facial cues, even mind-to-mind, Jonah could tell that Lilith was furious. Believe me, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. There was nothing in my therapies that could have caused these results. Besides, I just told you that each person received personalized therapy. So how could it be that on one particular night, everyone was poisoned?
“There wasn’t some common element in all the treatments?” Jonah persisted, “Something that could have been contaminated or used at too high a concentration or—”
No, Lilith said. Then paused. That’s not entirely true. Everyone received life-extension therapy, no matter what their ages or home guild. She paused. I’m guessing that’s why we’ve persisted as shades. Our bodies were damaged beyond repair, but our minds and memories survive.
“Where is your evidence, Lilith?” Gabriel exploded. “It may be appealing to blame this on some mysterious poisoner, but in science we go with the least-complex explanation. I know you never meant for it to happen, but it did. The only justice in all of this was that you were a victim yourself.”
Jonah had an epiphany. “Gabriel. That’s why you refused to target wizards, even though you told us they were to blame for the massacre,” he said. “You were ready to slaughter them to begin with, but now you couldn’t, because of your own guilt.”
Gabriel resisted the admission for a long moment, then nodded. “How could I favor bringing wizards to justice when I was responsible—at least in part—for the largest slaughter of Anawizard Weir in history?”
“Especially when you’re still walking around free,” Jonah said. “Awkward.”
Gabriel bowed his head. “Even if I didn’t intend it, it happened. For months after the disaster, I couldn’t bear to return to Thorn Hill. I even considered suicide. When I did go back, and I saw what was going on there, I realized that the survivors needed an advocate to protect their interests.”