Bones of Salt

Roman

"What makes you think I'm going to comply?" Bertha asked us.

"I could kill you if you don't," I bluffed. "I have perfect aim and I've been itching to use a knife for some time now. Plus, one of the perks of not being a Watcher, is that I don't have a blessed weapon, or something that snaps in half if I used it to do something unpure."

I eyed Jonathan's sword with what I reckoned, being a lover of deadly munitions, could pass for distaste.

"Be wary of whom you offend," Bertha said. "Even Prophets respond to the Court. However, I'm more than ready to dismiss it as a reckless whim. I'm not so idiotic as you must I am -- I know that you wouldn't do it."

"Roman," Jonathan looked a little panicked. Maybe he wasn't sure I wasn't going to do it.

He smiled charmingly at Bertha, in a way that, normally, would have reminded me of Atticus, except that, ever since I'd known Jonathan, I was finding out how many different types of charms existed, and how their ways differed.

Atticus wouldn't have smiled quite so broadly, for example, because he said it might make you look like you have the upper hand, which people in positions of power do not like.

I understood then that Jonathan wanted Bertha to think we had the upper hand. And if we would have gone down for it, he wouldn't have been sorry.

"You had a reason when you said you didn't want anybody else in the room to hear," Jonathan said slyly.

Okay, maybe he had the upper hand.

"I'm beginning to think," Jonathan went on, with the look in his eyes of someone who had been thinking it for a while, "that you didn't want to hide this information from Minx and Mira, but from the other members of the Court. I know how it works between the five of you -- each one tries to find ways to be one step ahead of the others."

"Wouldn't it be nice if I reminded you why you know?" Bertha teased him. "For some reason, I don't think your friend here knows that much about you."

Jonathan became pale.

"He grew up with Athanasios, who is your friend," I said. "Yes, even in Old Solima we know about the lives of the most prominent members of the Watchers, especially if, like in my case, my brother and his girlfriend patrol the streets."

It looked like Bertha was unsure whether to add more, and Jonathan's color had not come back to his face yet.

"What I'm trying to do," Jonathan explained. "Is to follow an ancient Silanian philosophy, and one which I admire really much, that says that the best way to win any battle -- even if you were invincible with weapons -- is to have the skill to prevent the battle from happening in the first place."

"So?" Bertha asked.

"We won't follow your plan," Jonathan said. "And if we leave the room before you tell us how to solve this situation, assuming you know a way, we'll tell the other members everything you've been holding out on them. And if you kill us to prevent that from happening, I'm sure you agree that it would look very suspicious on your part."

"I hadn't thought of that when I threatened her," I said. "Well, I wouldn't mind going to jail for a good cause. She might think differently, though."

"Okay," Bertha said. "There is a way to close the barrier between this world and the Chaos world permanently. Of course, it could be a tragedy in itself. Not having been tested before, the scholars disagree on the final effect. Would it only solve this problem, destruct this bridge, or would it close the connection completely, rendering the Watchers useless? And if that came to be, what if it wasn't the will of the Endless One?"