The Book Eaters(77)
Hester touched her throat.
“I never said what we had been through,” Killock answered in silky tones. “Are you so sure we have that much in common?”
“I can put two and two together,” Devon said. “I’m guessing the Ravenscars have been keeping their mind eater children in defiance of the Families’ customs, because there are a lot of you here. Likewise, there are no book eaters in this household.” She slouched against the overstuffed armchair. “I’m also guessing the ‘coup’ was more of a civil war. Mind eater Ravenscars versus the book eater Ravenscars, that kind of thing. It sounds like you wanted to free other mind eaters? By giving away Redemption?” Her gaze flicked briefly to Hester. “Which your patriarch refused to do.”
“Bang on the money.” Killock smiled. “Allow me to give some context, if I may. After my predecessors developed Redemption, the patriarchs stopped killing my kind at birth. They decided our lives were worth the hassle. We can write, after all—an increasingly important ability in a modern world that requires paperwork and literacy. And we can steal identities at a pinch, if needed. The only question was how to balance our usefulness against our inherent danger to others.”
“They did not trust us to live unsupervised,” Hester said, crossing and uncrossing her ankles with tense energy. “The hunger would always be a temptation, even when we can subsist on books as you do now. Hundreds of years of fear isn’t easily overturned, I suppose. The knights already existed to arrange and chaperone marriages, so the patriarchs added the keeping of ‘dragons’ to their duties.”
“The patriarchs feared our power,” Killock interjected, “and they feared each other misusing our power. The knights, because they are not a Family in the usual sense, were the only ones allowed to ‘raise’ us.”
“Maybe they weren’t wrong to be afraid,” Hester said quietly, then flinched under her brother’s sullen displeasure.
“You’re both here, though,” Devon said, gently sidestepping their feud, “so somewhere along the way, the Ravenscars must have ignored those orders and stopped sending children to the knights.”
“Correct,” Killock said, still scowling at his sister. He clearly did not like being disagreed with. “My predecessors chose to keep their special children, a decision that made our Family successful and wealthy. Over the decades, our numbers have grown significantly.”
Which was the exact situation the patriarchs hadn’t wanted, Devon thought. “And the knights just allowed this?” The bloody irony of it all.
“Not exactly. We had to pay them off to keep our secrets. And our children.” Killock made a vague gesture. “Still, it was a broadly beneficial arrangement all around. Sometimes, they even offloaded their ‘failed’ dragons to our household. Those whose temperaments were unsuitable for dragon-training, that kind of thing.”
“It was still oppression,” Hester said softly. “We—the mind eaters of Ravenscar—hoped for a future where there were no more knights at all. Where our Family could openly be a house for mind eaters.” She sighed. “But building that future required gaining access to the secret of making Redemption—knowledge that the Ravenscar patriarchs passed down among themselves and never gave to us. Without that knowledge, we remained dispossessed.”
Obvious in hindsight, Devon realized with silent chagrin. Killock could never be patriarch himself, not as a mind eater.
“Weston was both a book eater and a patriarch, making him unsympathetic to our issues and also set in his ways,” Killock said, a note of old resentment in his voice. “He knew the cure, but he would not share it with me. Set my people free, I begged him, as Moses once begged the Pharaoh. And like Pharaoh, he only laughed. Such secrets are not for your kind, he said. To my face.” Beads of sweat formed on Killock’s upper lip; he wiped them away with his sleeve. “In his eyes, we were spoiled and lucky. He felt that what we asked for was an indulgence of extreme proportions.”
Devon listened with growing alarm; she feared where this story was headed.
“Like you,” Killock went on, “we found ourselves in a position where there was but one single person standing in the way of freedom: our patriarch.” He leaned forward, breathing ragged. “When he would not give me the secret of Redemption, I took it from him. For the sake of our people, because it was God’s will that we live freely!”
She should have guessed sooner. “You … ate your father’s mind?”
“What?” Gray eyes dilated, pupils swallowing irises from within. “No, heavens no. I communed with him, Devon. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. Thus it is written in the Bible, described as a sacred act of communion.”
“Communion,” she said, a little numbly. “Is that what you call mind eating? Is that how you … enshrine it?”
Hester wrapped her arms around herself, shoulders hunched.
Killock though, pointed like an auctioneer at a sale. “You are too literal, trapped in old ways of thinking. I thought as you did, once, and considered my actions the height of abomination, both my feeding and the changes enacted in me. But I know better these days.” He was wild-eyed now. Nostrils red and flaring. “I have my father’s spirit to thank for that. His soul lives on within me, teaching and guiding. We have forgiven each other and are at peace.”