Chapter 27: The Good Mother — The Key of Oslov

Volume 16: Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 3: The Chase

Chapter 27 The Good Mother

Chapter Notes

Vreni is pronounced FREH-nee—it’s a nickname for Verena in Switzerland that I stole for Oslov. :)

Chapter Notes

Vreni is pronounced FREH-nee—it’s a nickname for Verena in Switzerland that I stole for Oslov. :)

3 November, Year 373

The greenhouses of Thurskein’s Sector Four stretched from one end of the sector’s top level to the other. The vast tunnels would be flooded with sunlight in the summer, but in November they were lit by strips of violet grow lights that sizzled almost imperceptibly. The vibration made Tilrey’s teeth ache as he trudged past beds of kale and collards. It was so hot that he’d loosened his jerkin and rolled up the sleeves.“Sorry it’s taking so long,” said his guide, a hapless young assistant to the sector’s Supervisor. “Harvesters move from station to station, but we should find her soon.”“Good.” Tilrey wiped sweat from his brow. They seemed to have walked at least a mile. Normally he enjoyed greenhouses, but the ones he’d visited in Redda were recreational or decorative, not industrial. Here, a chemical rancidness underlay the smell of growing things. The workers looked stoop-shouldered and sallow from toiling all day under the lights.The morning after Einara gave him the good news about Karishkov’s confession, he’d flown straight to Thurskein, promising to join Gersha that evening in the Southern Range.The Supervisor of Sector Four had given him a knowing, almost snide look when he asked to see Verena Thulver. Tilrey handed her an official letter signed by Vera Linnett, explaining that Thulver’s input was needed for a Bureau of Labor study.Not a very convincing pretext, but the name of any sector Admin carried weight in Thurskein, and Vera’s signature was real enough. She’d provided it without even asking him why.The Supervisor didn’t, either. She scanned the letter, nodded to her assistant, and said, “Ida can bring you to Thulver.”If this had been Sector Six, where Lisha was in charge, she would have probed for a better explanation. Tilrey tried to volunteer a few more details, but the Supervisor shook her head in a blasé way and said, “A Fir’n Admin signed off. That’s good enough for me.”Did the Supervisor of Four know who he was, who his mother was? Did she even know about the lockdown in Six? Her face revealed nothing but boredom.Her apathy annoyed Tilrey, but he knew it was a symptom of a bigger problem. There was no official communication among the city’s sectors, no meetings where their leaders could hash out the problems they might have in common. Supervisors had to bring all of their needs to their respective Upstart Admins, who represented the Bureau of Labor in Redda.It was a brilliant strategy on the Strutters’ part—a city divided was a city that could never rebel. But rumors passed between the different sectors, Dal had assured Tilrey, and sometimes people did, too, legitimately or illegitimately. According to ’Skein legend, there were tunnels in the Basement, painstakingly dug and guarded by smugglers, that would take you to every spoke on the city’s wheel.They were crossing a long stretch of chard plants when the assistant called out, “Thulver!”She led Tilrey up to a large woman who was filling a basket with the red-veined greens. “Somebody from Redda to see you.”Verena—Vreni—Thulver took her time standing up. Heavier than she’d been when Tilrey first saw her, long ago in Karishkov’s villa, she moved with fluid dignity. Her dingy white coverall contrasted with the dark luxuriance of her hair, which she’d twisted into a crown of braids even higher and more elaborate than Davita Lindblom’s.“Tell him to go back where he came from,” Vreni snapped. But as she turned and caught sight of Tilrey, her expression changed from annoyance to surprise. “I don’t know you.”Yes, you do. But Tilrey kept quiet while the assistant explained his supposed errand from the Bureau of Labor, then ushered them both into a cramped trailer that appeared to function as a breakroom.“You can talk here, Fir Bronn,” she said, hovering in the doorway. “When you’re done, go back the way we came. Or ask one of the forepersons to ping me if you need a guide.”“Thank you.” Tilrey sat down at a table that held the remains of someone’s lunch. The air was cooler in here, and the fluorescent strip overhead was actually a relief after the seething grow lights.Vreni sat down opposite him, elbows on the table. When the assistant was gone, she said with a flash of her dark eyes, “On second thought, I know exactly who you are.”“I thought you might.”It had been nearly thirty years since they met, and then only briefly and embarrassingly. Sent by Verán to service Karishkov, Tilrey had been trying to give the man a blow job when Vreni burst in and scolded her Upstart lover for having a kettle boy in the villa when their son was upstairs.“I’m afraid it wasn’t the best first impression,” he said. “I didn’t know I was interrupting family time.”She snorted. “Funny how you apologize for the interruption, but not for sending your Fir back later to plant a camera and blackmail us.”“We didn’t mean to blackmail you.” It felt strange to speak of his long-ago political machinations to this woman who was trapped in a life of manual labor. “We used the photos as a lever with Councillor Karishkov.”“Who was my husband.” Vreni emphasized the word, glaring at him as if defying him to deny it. “My son’s father. You used my minor son and me as pawns in your game. We were nothing to you—just an opportunity.”Tilrey tried to speak, but she said, “No, no excuses. You weren’t just following orders. You were more than a kettle boy then, and you’re more than a Councillor’s secretary now. I know all about you. Aleks told me.”Had Aleks told her he was part of the True Hearth? Tilrey glanced automatically at the ceiling, where a camera’s eye poked from one corner. Hedging, he said, “But Aleks lives in Sector Six—did live in Sector Six, may his last moment be bright. How did you talk so freely with him?”Vreni’s eyes followed his. “That cam’s broken—has been forever. Nobody cares what weeders and hoers have to say to each other.”She leaned forward on her elbows. Something in her hair clinked, and Tilrey saw that her braids were wound through with colored yarn and studded with tiny talismans—metal figurines and others that might have been wood or bone.“Aleks and I had ways of seeing each other,” she said. “I imagine you know we can get outside the wall, just the way I know all about you and your mother and your friends and those people you smuggled to Harbour.”Tilrey’s throat tightened. He’d hoped Vreni would be a little less clued in, a little more doddering and sentimental, but he shouldn’t be surprised. This woman had raised Aleks.Apprehension must have flashed across his face, because Vreni smiled in a way that was condescending and soothing at once. It reminded him of the maternal fretting that Davita used to catch her rivals off guard.“So now we understand each other,” she said. “And I don’t want you mentioning my son’s last moment again, because it hasn’t happened yet. Aleks isn’t dead.”Tilrey nodded. His mother would never have given him up for dead, either. “I hear you banished Niko from your life because he couldn’t find Aleks.”She gave him a hard look. “Niko’s been pouring out his sorrows, hasn’t he? I ‘banished’ him because I’ve finally had enough of him and his whining about something that ended decades ago. And because he’s given up on finding our son.”She sounded so confident Aleks was alive that Tilrey felt a flicker of hope. “Are you in communication with Aleks, then?” If Vreni was getting past the wall, it wasn’t impossible she’d found Aleks herself.Her face shuttered. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? All these years later, you still want to make my son into your pawn. What game are you playing with Niko now, Tilrey Bronn?”Tilrey drew a deep breath. He wasn’t used to leading with the truth, but subterfuge seemed pointless. He needed her to trust him. “You know about the lockdown in Six. You know why Niko won’t lift it.”“Aleks had a sector-wide strike planned.” Vreni’s proud face sagged, settling into anxious furrows. “I told him not to organize. As long as Redda keeps us enslaved, open resistance always ends in blood—I know that better than most.”Enslaved. Even True Hearthers rarely used that word; it felt potent and dangerous. Were they really slaves of the government, of Redda, of Upstarts?“Aleks was raised to practice our faith on the sly,” Vreni continued. “I taught him to work around the rules, the way my kin have done since this city was built. But he insisted on doing things his own way—my sweet, damnably stubborn boy.”Her eyes met Tilrey’s, and now they were tense with rage. “Aleks heard about the goings-on in Sector Six, about your True Hearth. He applied for a transfer there the instant he was out of school. He wanted to be a rebel, and he wanted to do it where the fallout wouldn’t hurt me. That was his excuse, anyway, for going where the trouble was.”“He was a good son,” Tilrey said, feeling a pang of guilt. He’d done nothing to shield his own mother from the consequences of their rebellion—but then, Lisha wouldn’t have allowed him to stop her from joining the Hearth even if he’d known in time.“He tried. But it wasn’t enough,” Vreni said. “When Aleks found out the True Hearth was sending people to Harbour, he started his own sect of people who wanted to stay here and reclaim the northland and the old ways.” She spat into her palm—a ritual gesture, perhaps, as if it were taboo to mention the “old ways” to him. “Some people think I control my son—hah! Believe me, I’ve tried. Telling kids to grow beards, organizing strikes—those were his own brilliant ideas. Niko protected Aleks, but there was only so much he could do when the boy was determined to . . . to . . .”Without warning, her rage melted into something else, her eyes glittering with tears.“You did your best for Aleks,” Tilrey said, keeping his voice gentle. “He’s an adult with a mind of his own.”“Stop patronizing me!” Vreni’s eyes flashed again, and she lowered them. “I know you think my son’s dead. Where were we? Oh. The lockdown. I suppose Niko thought it was the best way to stop the strike and keep Aleks from passing the point of no return. If Aleks were arrested, that would have been disaster. I just wish he’d asked me before he took action.”If Vreni was truly estranged from Niko, maybe this plan had a chance. “If Niko had asked you what to do about the strike,” Tilrey asked, “what would you have told him?”Vreni shook a finger at him. “Oh, no. You may be cunning, but you’re not going to slither your way into my confidence.”“Is that what Aleks told you? That I’m the slithering type?”“No.” She looked him up and down, her lip curling. “Aleks is too trusting. I draw my own conclusions. You may have been born here, but you walk and talk like a Strutter. Your son is a Strutter. You passed him off as one of them.”Tilrey had almost forgotten what they had in common—a misbirth. He didn’t want to drag Ceill into this, but he said, “I tried to give my son a better life. Surely you don’t hold that against me.”“I don’t hold anything against you. I don’t trust you.”“No. Why should you?” She was right—he found frankness difficult. In Redda, in the Sector, people so rarely said anything straight out.But he gave it a try. “I still haven’t told you why I’m here,” he said. “I want the lockdown lifted. Niko persists in keeping it—out of spite or despair, I don’t know. If liberating Sector Six means taking him down, I’ll do it. And I know you can help me—if you’re willing.”“Help you take down a Councillor?” Vreni arched a brow. “Do I look to you like I have that much power?”“Now you’re the one being coy.” He held her gaze. “I know about the confession Niko made to you, Vreni. Long ago, when you believed he was a Laborer and your legal husband, you made him a true member of your family. You brought him out beyond the wall and showed him your rituals—something you’d never do for any outsider.”Her eyes narrowed. “Who told you that? Who did he tell?”Tilrey couldn’t get sidetracked. “But when Niko heard your cousins were plotting to blow up a stretch of the barrier wall, he panicked. He broke his cover and told you who he really was—an Upstart sent to spy on you. He couldn’t bear to betray his new family, so he turned traitor to the Republic. He chose you over his past, his birth family, his future. He protected you.”Vreni’s face was as hard as concrete. “Is that what he said? He tried to protect us, but that didn’t last long. His Int/Sec handler sensed something wrong and confronted him. Niko caved immediately. He gave up the whole plot and my cousins’ names. They went off to Redda and never came back.”That wasn’t precisely what Niko had told Einara, but it matched up with the version of the story she’d heard from retired Admin Keikorannen. “You blame Niko for your cousins’ deaths, may their last moments be bright,” Tilrey said, lowering his eyes respectfully. “After that, though, for your son, you accepted his protection. You had no choice.”“Stop assuming you know so much about me. Niko was my husband!” Vreni’s eyes were pure fire now. “My son’s father! I blamed him, I hated him, but I loved him. Before the plot, before he told me the truth about him, we were happy—like I’d never been before, like I’ve never been since. I don’t expect you to understand.”She shook her head, tears glinting on her lashes. “I did have a choice, and I chose Niko, even after what happened to my cousins. I chose not to deprive my son of a father.”Tilrey kept his expression neutral. “I can’t help noticing,” he said, “that you use the past tense. He was your husband. You loved him.”Vreni plucked a tissue from the box on the table and blew her nose. “You are clever. Who on earth did Niko blurt out our secrets to? Not you—he doesn’t get seduced by men, and he despises you in particular. A woman, I think.”“When you distanced yourself from Niko, he sought comfort. Someone who reminded him of you.”“Of course he did.” But the vehemence had bled out of Vreni’s voice. She was tired. “Niko was always weak. He couldn’t even face up to the truth of what he’d done; he always fudged the facts, even when it was obvious to me. Well.” She wiped her eyes. “So Niko confessed to someone who happened to be in your employ. Poor fool. And now you want me to betray him, after all these years.”This was the crucial moment. Tilrey waited until Vreni’s eyes met his again. “For my mother’s sake,” he said.She laughed at his earnestness—a brief, bitter laugh. “And for the sake of your rebellion. So that more mothers can lose their sons, and more sons can lose their fathers and mothers, and on and on.”“That isn’t what we’re planning to allow to happen. We—”“It never is, is it? There’s always some good reason, some ideal. You know, I don’t entirely blame Niko for giving up my cousins. They would have gotten themselves killed sooner or later. Everyone who attacks our oppressors directly dies, because we’re weak and divided, just as they want us.”Tilrey clenched a fist under the table. So many of her fears and misgivings about revolution were his, too. It made his case harder to argue.But maybe politics weren’t the point here. For Vreni, he could see, family, tradition, and continuity were what mattered.“I’m begging you,” he said. “For my mother. For my friends. For my son. He idolized your son—did you know that?”“Aleks told me about Ceill.” Vreni’s gaze was far away. “He said he was a good kid—smart, brave, all the right instincts.” Her mouth twisted. “He said you didn’t like it when they spent time together.”“I wanted to protect him from getting involved with the Northmen.”“Can’t blame you for that.” She sighed.“But I can’t control Ceill any more than you can control Aleks. In the end, people will always crave freedom.” Tilrey swallowed. “I know why you’re suspicious of ideals, but I think what we want is what you want, Vreni. To open up this city and give people the freedom to stay or go—even to live in the wilderness if they choose.”“Did I say I wanted that?” But she sounded distracted. “What makes you think I have the power to bring down Niko, anyway? His handler and the Admin covered up his treachery. What makes you think I have any proof?”She did have proof. He could hear it in her voice, so he made his own low and desperate. “We could bring in a judicial officer to record your sworn testimony. That might be enough. Vreni, please . . .”Vreni rose in a single graceful motion. “If you can bring me proof of whether my son is alive or dead,” she said, planting her hands on the table, “then maybe, just maybe, I’ll give you what you need to destroy the poor fool who spawned him.”

3 November, Year 373

“Sorry it’s taking so long,” said his guide, a hapless young assistant to the sector’s Supervisor. “Harvesters move from station to station, but we should find her soon.”

“Good.” Tilrey wiped sweat from his brow. They seemed to have walked at least a mile. Normally he enjoyed greenhouses, but the ones he’d visited in Redda were recreational or decorative, not industrial. Here, a chemical rancidness underlay the smell of growing things. The workers looked stoop-shouldered and sallow from toiling all day under the lights.

The morning after Einara gave him the good news about Karishkov’s confession, he’d flown straight to Thurskein, promising to join Gersha that evening in the Southern Range.

The Supervisor of Sector Four had given him a knowing, almost snide look when he asked to see Verena Thulver. Tilrey handed her an official letter signed by Vera Linnett, explaining that Thulver’s input was needed for a Bureau of Labor study.

Not a very convincing pretext, but the name of any sector Admin carried weight in Thurskein, and Vera’s signature was real enough. She’d provided it without even asking him why.

The Supervisor didn’t, either. She scanned the letter, nodded to her assistant, and said, “Ida can bring you to Thulver.”

If this had been Sector Six, where Lisha was in charge, she would have probed for a better explanation. Tilrey tried to volunteer a few more details, but the Supervisor shook her head in a blasé way and said, “A Fir’n Admin signed off. That’s good enough for me.”

Did the Supervisor of Four know who he was, who his mother was? Did she even know about the lockdown in Six? Her face revealed nothing but boredom.

Her apathy annoyed Tilrey, but he knew it was a symptom of a bigger problem. There was no official communication among the city’s sectors, no meetings where their leaders could hash out the problems they might have in common. Supervisors had to bring all of their needs to their respective Upstart Admins, who represented the Bureau of Labor in Redda.

It was a brilliant strategy on the Strutters’ part—a city divided was a city that could never rebel. But rumors passed between the different sectors, Dal had assured Tilrey, and sometimes people did, too, legitimately or illegitimately. According to ’Skein legend, there were tunnels in the Basement, painstakingly dug and guarded by smugglers, that would take you to every spoke on the city’s wheel.

They were crossing a long stretch of chard plants when the assistant called out, “Thulver!”

She led Tilrey up to a large woman who was filling a basket with the red-veined greens. “Somebody from Redda to see you.”

Verena—Vreni—Thulver took her time standing up. Heavier than she’d been when Tilrey first saw her, long ago in Karishkov’s villa, she moved with fluid dignity. Her dingy white coverall contrasted with the dark luxuriance of her hair, which she’d twisted into a crown of braids even higher and more elaborate than Davita Lindblom’s.

“Tell him to go back where he came from,” Vreni snapped. But as she turned and caught sight of Tilrey, her expression changed from annoyance to surprise. “I don’t know you.”

Yes, you do. But Tilrey kept quiet while the assistant explained his supposed errand from the Bureau of Labor, then ushered them both into a cramped trailer that appeared to function as a breakroom.

“You can talk here, Fir Bronn,” she said, hovering in the doorway. “When you’re done, go back the way we came. Or ask one of the forepersons to ping me if you need a guide.”

“Thank you.” Tilrey sat down at a table that held the remains of someone’s lunch. The air was cooler in here, and the fluorescent strip overhead was actually a relief after the seething grow lights.

Vreni sat down opposite him, elbows on the table. When the assistant was gone, she said with a flash of her dark eyes, “On second thought, I know exactly who you are.”

“I thought you might.”

It had been nearly thirty years since they met, and then only briefly and embarrassingly. Sent by Verán to service Karishkov, Tilrey had been trying to give the man a blow job when Vreni burst in and scolded her Upstart lover for having a kettle boy in the villa when their son was upstairs.

“I’m afraid it wasn’t the best first impression,” he said. “I didn’t know I was interrupting family time.”

She snorted. “Funny how you apologize for the interruption, but not for sending your Fir back later to plant a camera and blackmail us.”

“We didn’t mean to blackmail you.” It felt strange to speak of his long-ago political machinations to this woman who was trapped in a life of manual labor. “We used the photos as a lever with Councillor Karishkov.”

“Who was my husband.” Vreni emphasized the word, glaring at him as if defying him to deny it. “My son’s father. You used my minor son and me as pawns in your game. We were nothing to you—just an opportunity.”

Tilrey tried to speak, but she said, “No, no excuses. You weren’t just following orders. You were more than a kettle boy then, and you’re more than a Councillor’s secretary now. I know all about you. Aleks told me.”

Had Aleks told her he was part of the True Hearth? Tilrey glanced automatically at the ceiling, where a camera’s eye poked from one corner. Hedging, he said, “But Aleks lives in Sector Six—did live in Sector Six, may his last moment be bright. How did you talk so freely with him?”

Vreni’s eyes followed his. “That cam’s broken—has been forever. Nobody cares what weeders and hoers have to say to each other.”

She leaned forward on her elbows. Something in her hair clinked, and Tilrey saw that her braids were wound through with colored yarn and studded with tiny talismans—metal figurines and others that might have been wood or bone.

“Aleks and I had ways of seeing each other,” she said. “I imagine you know we can get outside the wall, just the way I know all about you and your mother and your friends and those people you smuggled to Harbour.”

Tilrey’s throat tightened. He’d hoped Vreni would be a little less clued in, a little more doddering and sentimental, but he shouldn’t be surprised. This woman had raised Aleks.

Apprehension must have flashed across his face, because Vreni smiled in a way that was condescending and soothing at once. It reminded him of the maternal fretting that Davita used to catch her rivals off guard.

“So now we understand each other,” she said. “And I don’t want you mentioning my son’s last moment again, because it hasn’t happened yet. Aleks isn’t dead.”

Tilrey nodded. His mother would never have given him up for dead, either. “I hear you banished Niko from your life because he couldn’t find Aleks.”

She gave him a hard look. “Niko’s been pouring out his sorrows, hasn’t he? I ‘banished’ him because I’ve finally had enough of him and his whining about something that ended decades ago. And because he’s given up on finding our son.”

She sounded so confident Aleks was alive that Tilrey felt a flicker of hope. “Are you in communication with Aleks, then?” If Vreni was getting past the wall, it wasn’t impossible she’d found Aleks herself.

Her face shuttered. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? All these years later, you still want to make my son into your pawn. What game are you playing with Niko now, Tilrey Bronn?”

Tilrey drew a deep breath. He wasn’t used to leading with the truth, but subterfuge seemed pointless. He needed her to trust him. “You know about the lockdown in Six. You know why Niko won’t lift it.”

“Aleks had a sector-wide strike planned.” Vreni’s proud face sagged, settling into anxious furrows. “I told him not to organize. As long as Redda keeps us enslaved, open resistance always ends in blood—I know that better than most.”

Enslaved. Even True Hearthers rarely used that word; it felt potent and dangerous. Were they really slaves of the government, of Redda, of Upstarts?

“Aleks was raised to practice our faith on the sly,” Vreni continued. “I taught him to work around the rules, the way my kin have done since this city was built. But he insisted on doing things his own way—my sweet, damnably stubborn boy.”

Her eyes met Tilrey’s, and now they were tense with rage. “Aleks heard about the goings-on in Sector Six, about your True Hearth. He applied for a transfer there the instant he was out of school. He wanted to be a rebel, and he wanted to do it where the fallout wouldn’t hurt me. That was his excuse, anyway, for going where the trouble was.”

“He was a good son,” Tilrey said, feeling a pang of guilt. He’d done nothing to shield his own mother from the consequences of their rebellion—but then, Lisha wouldn’t have allowed him to stop her from joining the Hearth even if he’d known in time.

“He tried. But it wasn’t enough,” Vreni said. “When Aleks found out the True Hearth was sending people to Harbour, he started his own sect of people who wanted to stay here and reclaim the northland and the old ways.” She spat into her palm—a ritual gesture, perhaps, as if it were taboo to mention the “old ways” to him. “Some people think I control my son—hah! Believe me, I’ve tried. Telling kids to grow beards, organizing strikes—those were his own brilliant ideas. Niko protected Aleks, but there was only so much he could do when the boy was determined to . . . to . . .”

Without warning, her rage melted into something else, her eyes glittering with tears.

“You did your best for Aleks,” Tilrey said, keeping his voice gentle. “He’s an adult with a mind of his own.”

“Stop patronizing me!” Vreni’s eyes flashed again, and she lowered them. “I know you think my son’s dead. Where were we? Oh. The lockdown. I suppose Niko thought it was the best way to stop the strike and keep Aleks from passing the point of no return. If Aleks were arrested, that would have been disaster. I just wish he’d asked me before he took action.”

If Vreni was truly estranged from Niko, maybe this plan had a chance. “If Niko had asked you what to do about the strike,” Tilrey asked, “what would you have told him?”

Vreni shook a finger at him. “Oh, no. You may be cunning, but you’re not going to slither your way into my confidence.”

“Is that what Aleks told you? That I’m the slithering type?”

“No.” She looked him up and down, her lip curling. “Aleks is too trusting. I draw my own conclusions. You may have been born here, but you walk and talk like a Strutter. Your son is a Strutter. You passed him off as one of them.”

Tilrey had almost forgotten what they had in common—a misbirth. He didn’t want to drag Ceill into this, but he said, “I tried to give my son a better life. Surely you don’t hold that against me.”

“I don’t hold anything against you. I don’t trust you.”

“No. Why should you?” She was right—he found frankness difficult. In Redda, in the Sector, people so rarely said anything straight out.

But he gave it a try. “I still haven’t told you why I’m here,” he said. “I want the lockdown lifted. Niko persists in keeping it—out of spite or despair, I don’t know. If liberating Sector Six means taking him down, I’ll do it. And I know you can help me—if you’re willing.”

“Help you take down a Councillor?” Vreni arched a brow. “Do I look to you like I have that much power?”

“Now you’re the one being coy.” He held her gaze. “I know about the confession Niko made to you, Vreni. Long ago, when you believed he was a Laborer and your legal husband, you made him a true member of your family. You brought him out beyond the wall and showed him your rituals—something you’d never do for any outsider.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who told you that? Who did he tell?”

Tilrey couldn’t get sidetracked. “But when Niko heard your cousins were plotting to blow up a stretch of the barrier wall, he panicked. He broke his cover and told you who he really was—an Upstart sent to spy on you. He couldn’t bear to betray his new family, so he turned traitor to the Republic. He chose you over his past, his birth family, his future. He protected you.”

Vreni’s face was as hard as concrete. “Is that what he said? He tried to protect us, but that didn’t last long. His Int/Sec handler sensed something wrong and confronted him. Niko caved immediately. He gave up the whole plot and my cousins’ names. They went off to Redda and never came back.”

That wasn’t precisely what Niko had told Einara, but it matched up with the version of the story she’d heard from retired Admin Keikorannen. “You blame Niko for your cousins’ deaths, may their last moments be bright,” Tilrey said, lowering his eyes respectfully. “After that, though, for your son, you accepted his protection. You had no choice.”

“Stop assuming you know so much about me. Niko was my husband!” Vreni’s eyes were pure fire now. “My son’s father! I blamed him, I hated him, but I loved him. Before the plot, before he told me the truth about him, we were happy—like I’d never been before, like I’ve never been since. I don’t expect you to understand.”

She shook her head, tears glinting on her lashes. “I did have a choice, and I chose Niko, even after what happened to my cousins. I chose not to deprive my son of a father.”

Tilrey kept his expression neutral. “I can’t help noticing,” he said, “that you use the past tense. He was your husband. You loved him.”

Vreni plucked a tissue from the box on the table and blew her nose. “You are clever. Who on earth did Niko blurt out our secrets to? Not you—he doesn’t get seduced by men, and he despises you in particular. A woman, I think.”

“When you distanced yourself from Niko, he sought comfort. Someone who reminded him of you.”

“Of course he did.” But the vehemence had bled out of Vreni’s voice. She was tired. “Niko was always weak. He couldn’t even face up to the truth of what he’d done; he always fudged the facts, even when it was obvious to me. Well.” She wiped her eyes. “So Niko confessed to someone who happened to be in your employ. Poor fool. And now you want me to betray him, after all these years.”

This was the crucial moment. Tilrey waited until Vreni’s eyes met his again. “For my mother’s sake,” he said.

She laughed at his earnestness—a brief, bitter laugh. “And for the sake of your rebellion. So that more mothers can lose their sons, and more sons can lose their fathers and mothers, and on and on.”

“That isn’t what we’re planning to allow to happen. We—”

“It never is, is it? There’s always some good reason, some ideal. You know, I don’t entirely blame Niko for giving up my cousins. They would have gotten themselves killed sooner or later. Everyone who attacks our oppressors directly dies, because we’re weak and divided, just as they want us.”

Tilrey clenched a fist under the table. So many of her fears and misgivings about revolution were his, too. It made his case harder to argue.

But maybe politics weren’t the point here. For Vreni, he could see, family, tradition, and continuity were what mattered.

“I’m begging you,” he said. “For my mother. For my friends. For my son. He idolized your son—did you know that?”

“Aleks told me about Ceill.” Vreni’s gaze was far away. “He said he was a good kid—smart, brave, all the right instincts.” Her mouth twisted. “He said you didn’t like it when they spent time together.”

“I wanted to protect him from getting involved with the Northmen.”

“Can’t blame you for that.” She sighed.

“But I can’t control Ceill any more than you can control Aleks. In the end, people will always crave freedom.” Tilrey swallowed. “I know why you’re suspicious of ideals, but I think what we want is what you want, Vreni. To open up this city and give people the freedom to stay or go—even to live in the wilderness if they choose.”

“Did I say I wanted that?” But she sounded distracted. “What makes you think I have the power to bring down Niko, anyway? His handler and the Admin covered up his treachery. What makes you think I have any proof?”

She did have proof. He could hear it in her voice, so he made his own low and desperate. “We could bring in a judicial officer to record your sworn testimony. That might be enough. Vreni, please . . .”

Vreni rose in a single graceful motion. “If you can bring me proof of whether my son is alive or dead,” she said, planting her hands on the table, “then maybe, just maybe, I’ll give you what you need to destroy the poor fool who spawned him.”