I COULD HAIL XANDER BEFORE I GET THERE, but I want to see his face, his aura, and judge him with my eyes as well as my mind. There’s no chance he didn’t know they were on their way. He always knows what is going on. Xander is the puppet master; his people dangle from strings in his hands. How could he have them come back here after so many have already died? We’ve burned the bodies, but does the sickness still hang in the air of this place?
We couldn’t save anyone. There were a few immune, but every single person who got sick died. He was disappointed. There was something in his thoughts about it, after Persey’s death. He suspected that if we could try a few more times, we’d be able to work out how to save someone. But we ran out of patients.
He wouldn’t have told them to come back, so they could get sick and I could try to heal them? Even as the thought forms, I’m pushing it away: he couldn’t do that, not to them, surely? These are his followers. He cares about them; I know he does. He wouldn’t risk them like that.
Would he?
And then there’s me. I’m his daughter. Does he care enough about me not to put me through that again, the pain of trying and failing to save each one—experiencing each death as if it is my own?
No. He doesn’t. He’s said as much before, and it hurts to know this. I’m not even sure why. He’s never been any kind of father to me. It wasn’t his fault before, but he knows who I am now, and he still wouldn’t save me from that pain.
If that is so, would he care enough about them to keep them away when coming here may mean they’ll die?
Even as I can’t believe he could do this to us all deliberately, I’m sick with distrust and fear. I have to ask him straight out if he has done this; it’s the only way to know.
I’ve started to work myself up to confront him about it, but when I arrive, I don’t need to bother. Cepta is there already, and she is furious enough for two.
He holds up his hands, and she’s quelled so instantly he must have attacked her aura. “Listen to me, both of you. Some of them are ill; they were already. They’ve come home to die.”