28. Betrayal and Counter-Betrayal

Entering the study and closing its thick door caused the noise from the melee outside to stop, as if a television program had suddenly been turned off. Her eyes were adjusting to the darker room, and she couldn't really see yet. Karl had turned his back to her, and now stood with both hands on the door, glowing presumably with Shu. He must be trying to strengthen it, she guessed. She turned back around to peer into the room, and then she saw him.

"Father!" He was slumped at his desk. "Are you all right?"

"Lucia?" He looked up as if in a daze. He looked terrible. "Lucia, is that you?"

She ran up to the desk and knelt in front of it. Extending her arm across the top, she grabbed his hand. It felt oddly clammy. "Yes, it's me Father. I'm here. I'm here with Karl."

At that his eyes widened and he looked toward the door. If he had been surprised to see her, he was positively shocked to see Karl. She noticed Karl hadn't turned around or said anything to the Minister and she thought that very strange. He must be awfully busy with the door. "Aren't you at the Press Conference?"

"We were, but no one's there now." Come on Lucia, you have to talk to him. "We were attacked, I mean, I was attacked. Someone is trying to kill me Father."

He tried to pull back his hand but she held on. "Why Father? Why is someone trying to kill me?" She pinned him with her eyes, willing him to answer.

He pulled himself straighter in his chair, his mouth set in a grim line. He no longer attempted to withdraw his hand but instead looked at her with those eyes that were duplicates of her own, gray-blue, now cold as glacier ice. "A true servant of the public must always be willing to make whatever sacrifices he is called to make, for the greater good of Padokia."

She released his hand herself then, slumping to the floor and leaning her back against the front of the desk. She couldn't look at him. She had to be hallucinating. That couldn't be true, that she would die for a slogan. Something repeated by school children at patriotic events.

For the Greater Good of Padokia. She couldn't remember the first time she had heard it said. It brought back memories of sunny summers spent at campaign rallies, passing out leaflets, or handing out balloons or buttons with other laughing young volunteers. Of standing behind her father, excited, smiling, dressed in her very best, while he spoke before cheering crowds. Or, when she was very little, being lifted, giggling, into the air, and held in Father's arms while the news photographer's cameras flashed and whirred.

Though, if she thought back carefully, there were other times when it had not been made as a bold exhortation. Quiet times when she had been left to amuse herself, silently reading or playing with dolls, while important looking men spoke with her father in serious, hushed tones. It had sounded a lot more solemn then. Almost like an oath or a prayer.

But never had it seemed menacing to her. She had certainly never felt threatened by it.

When had she become a traitor to Padokia? Was Padokia so weak that it couldn't bear her tinkering with its governing bodies' Party affiliations? No, this went deeper than that. Somewhere in her father's mind Love had waged war with Loyalty and had lost. He had seen her actions as a betrayal, and no one ever betrayed Minister VerHoffen. Her disloyalty must have felt very painful, Lucia thought, if it felt anything like what she was feeling toward him now.

With her back to her father she could see now that Karl's arms and shoulders were shuddering with the effort of holding back whoever was trying to get into the room. The door itself was glowing and deforming from all the force being used upon it.

Where was Illumi? Why hadn't he come? Was he outside with General Barhydt's men? Surely something must have stopped him or he would be at her side, wouldn't he? Was she such a poor reader of character that she was doomed to be betrayed and abandoned by everyone she cared about in her soon to be cut short life?

A more horrible thought came to her, what if he had really been stopped, for good? But then she realized with relief, that she was fairly sure the threat she was facing was Zaoldyeck, and although they brutalized them, the Zaoldyecks (unlike some others, she thought bitterly) didn't eat their own.

"You could have talked to me, Father." She didn't bother to turn around to face him as she stood. "You could have asked me not to take those jobs."

"I'm your father, Lucia." His normally steady, strong voice sounded wavering, and frail to her. "No one knows better than I that no one can tell you what to do; you never give up until you get what you want."

She laughed mirthlessly. Well she hadn't gotten her poor ability to read people's hearts from her father. Because it seems he knew her very well.

Then Karl turned toward her, and the door blew wide open.