The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(8)

Lehrer stepped forward and sat on the bench beside Noam, both feet flat on the ground, his shoes so shiny they reflected the lamps overhead. The wind caught his hair and blew strands of it loosely across his brow, making him seem less formal, though he still didn’t seem human. He looked the same as he did in that photograph Noam remembered, like he hadn’t aged a day.

Impossible to believe he was over 120 years old.

Noam was too aware of his own breath, exhaling as quietly as he could.

Lehrer was . . . well. Legendary came immediately to mind. At sixteen, he’d survived the catastrophe. At nineteen, he overthrew a nation. At twenty, he was crowned king.

Now, even though he occupied one of the most powerful positions in the world, Minister Lehrer could walk into the courtyard of the government complex utterly alone, without bodyguards, and not spare a thought for safety. He was untouchable, more myth than man. To look at Lehrer was to see a man who was everything Chancellor Sacha was not: Revolutionary. Principled.

Witching.

That was the one thing Noam had never quite been able to grasp. Why did Calix Lehrer, who’d sacrificed so much to build his utopia, allow a man like Sacha to rip his nation apart?

A question for later. Not now, with Lehrer so close that Noam felt his body heat.

His magic.

“What now, sir?”

“Let’s not talk about that yet,” Lehrer said, and this time when he looked at Noam, it was with a warm smile—one that reminded Noam, painfully, of his father. “Let’s just sit a spell. I don’t get to do that often, you know.”

It was a strange silence, Lehrer gazing at something far off in the distance and Noam wondering what this scene must look like to anyone watching: Defense Minister Calix Lehrer, reclining in the government complex courtyard next to a teenage boy in a too-small sweater.

Noam didn’t dare move. What if he accidentally knocked Lehrer’s elbow or brushed up against his thigh? He stole a glance at Lehrer’s wristwatch, visible below the cuff of his jacket, and his heart stammered to an abrupt stop. Before, Lehrer had worn leather gloves, but tonight his left hand was bare in his lap, long fingered and elegant.

The lines of the black X tattooed between his thumb and forefinger were blurry now. Just looking at it felt like an act of violence.

“It didn’t hurt as badly as you’d expect,” Lehrer said.

Noam jerked his gaze away from the mark as if burned, even though it meant meeting Lehrer’s eyes instead. They were unusually pale, more colorless than gray.

“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to stare.”

Lehrer smiled. “Don’t apologize. There’s no harm in curiosity.”

Maybe not. But Noam didn’t fancy risking it either way.

He tried to imagine a Lehrer as a child sitting in some bureaucratic office in the old country while a state official dipped the tattooing pen in ink. Noam’d read how Lehrer used his power to erase the scars of torture. Why leave this one?

Maybe he didn’t want anyone to be able to forget. Everyone who had lived through the catastrophe was dead . . . except Lehrer. And as long as Lehrer had this mark, the descendants of those men who’d tried to wipe witchings off the earth could never sanitize history.

“It was a long time ago,” Lehrer said. He lifted his left hand, holding it to the light. He didn’t seem upset, just thoughtful. “Sometimes I feel as if all that happened to someone else.” A small, dry laugh. “Or perhaps I’m just going senile.”

Noam seized the opportunity to change the subject, desperate to talk about anything, anything, besides genocide. “You don’t look your age. Sir.”

No shit, álvaro. Still, Lehrer was the only witching who’d been able to achieve something close to immortality.

Lehrer laughed. “If you thought I looked any older than forty, my vanity would never recover.” He turned toward Noam, hooking his elbow over the back of the bench. He searched Noam’s face. “I will be blunt with you, Noam. You cannot understand what I’m asking of you.”

Noam thought he had a pretty good idea.

Lehrer went on, his gaze unwavering. “I’m asking you to make great sacrifices. But then, you’ve sacrificed before, have you not? I read your file. What you gave up, when your father became ill, was more than should be asked of any child. And as for your work with Tom Brennan, I think I, more than most, understand that sometimes individual freedom is an easy price to pay in exchange for justice.”

Wait—wait, was Lehrer saying . . . was he actually saying what Noam thought he was saying? He stared at Lehrer’s unlined face, breath stilled in his throat.

In Noam’s old neighborhood, everyone had worshiped Lehrer because they thought he might champion refugees the way he’d championed witchings during the catastrophe—as though Lehrer was the personal hero of the downtrodden and the oppressed. Noam liked Lehrer well enough as a historical figure, but he’d thought the rest a touch idealistic.

Maybe he should have paid closer attention.

Sympathy isn’t action, Noam told himself. Chancellor Sacha was still the one in charge of Carolinia. Lehrer’s power was hamstrung by the same laws he’d drafted after abdicating the crown in 2024.

Still. Noam’s chest was alight with a dozen fluttering butterfly wings, all of them beating the same rhythm.