Eona - Alison Goodman [172]
Braced by Ryko, Chart bowed. “See, my lady, I can stand.” He grinned, the echo of my old master in his narrow features. “My muscles are too weak for much yet.” He paused and took a wheezing breath. “But Lon says with practice I’ll get stronger. He’s already made me this.” He held out a ball made of roughly bound leather strips. “To help my hands.”
I smiled. “You’re so tall!”
“I know, I know,” Chart crowed. He coughed and swallowed hard. “Not used to having so many words at once,” he rasped.
“Help him sit down again, Ryko,” Dela said, reaching for the boy. “He looks pale.”
“No!” The excitement in Chart’s voice sharpened. “Do not talk over me as if I were still on the floor!”
Dela drew back.
“You have been through a lot, boy, but keep a civil tongue,” Ryko warned.
Chart pulled his arm out of the islander’s tight hold, swaying as he turned to face me. “Ryko says that you can control my will now. Is that true?”
I met his fierce gaze. “I was going to tell you myself.” I glared at Ryko. “Did you think I would not tell him?”
“I no longer know what you will do,” Ryko said. “Your ideas of right and wrong have changed since you have become so close to Lord Ido.”
“Ryko!” Dela said. “This is not the way to do it. Not in front of the boy.”
The islander and I turned away from the Contraire.
“What are you saying, Ryko?” I demanded.
His chin jutted forward. “I see the same love of power in you that I see in him. You did not heal Chart for his own sake. You healed him as a show of your might, with no thought to his wants or needs.”
I bit down on my anger and glanced across at the boy. “You are happy to be healed, aren’t you?”
Chart groped for the liberation disc around his neck. “Am I still a free man? I don’t understand what this compulsion means.”
“Of course you are free,” I said.
Ryko snorted. “As free as a man whose will can be controlled at any time.”
“I will not apologize for using my power,” I snapped. My glance took in Chart and Dela, too. “You saw what happened in that meeting tent. I did what was best for the emperor.”
“You always have a good reason ready,” Ryko said. “You could have stopped once you’d healed Lord Ido. It was enough. But you did not.”
I crossed my arms. “You were not even in the tent.”
“No. But I felt you glorying in your power. You wanted to show your strength and fury and you used Chart to do it. Not so long ago, you would never have done that.”
“Even if that were true, it doesn’t matter.” I swept my hand through his accusation. “Everything has changed. I have to do things now that I never thought I would.”
“It matters to me,” Chart said.
I swung around to face him. “What?”
The boy flinched but his gaze was steady. “This gift is truly a blessing from the gods, Lady Eona, and I thank you.” He swallowed hard and held up the disc. “But you also gave me my liberation: the right to decide and choose for myself. In the meeting tent, you took that away.” He coughed and lifted his chin, stretching his throat muscles for more words. “When you were just Eon, you were my friend. I was always a real person to you. Never a demon freak without voice or mind. But in that tent, you made me the freak.” He drew himself up to his full height, the effort making his thin body shake. “You did not even look at my face until it was all over. I was just the thing you were using your power upon.”
“No, it was not like that,” I said, denying the sting of truth in his words. “You would have chosen to be healed, wouldn’t you?”
“That is exactly the point,” Ryko said acidly. “You did not give him the choice.”
“I do not need you to speak on my behalf,” Chart snapped at the islander. He turned back to me. “Have you already forgotten what it was like to be the cripple? To be allowed no feelings, no humanity? My friend Eon would not have forgotten.”
“I have not forgotten,” I said, trying to push down my own anger. “But I am not Eon anymore. Everything has changed. I am Lady Eona. I am the Mirror