In the Shadow of the Rings by Frank Kennedy (reading list TXT) 📗

used for centuries. Most of the time, families are rehabilitated within ten years. Wil you at least hear me out?”

He pul ed away. “You sweet child. Also, naïve. Anything you might propose would be a product of your subterfuge. Your parents wil hear none of it, let alone the rest of the Gentry. Besides, by the time Chi-Qua is my age, the Baek name wil be spoken with reverence again.

Social refinery is not a sentence of death. The next generation wil see things differently. They always do.”

“That’s a myth. I’ve done the research. Most families never recover from refinery. The Ju-Ho clan practical y ruled The Lagos for two hundred years after colonization. One scandal involving the patriarch’s brother brought down everyone. There are no records of the family –

even through pseudonyms – from fifty years after. Families don’t return to the Gentry without direct intervention from the original accusers themselves. Kae, it’s the only way, and it wil work. I promise.”

She saw the sudden, stark realization in his weary eyes. He understood what “intervention” meant. Kara knew her proposal was selfish at best. It might very wel destroy whatever modicum of happiness the former Baeks found in their new lives.

But it was a chance – and maybe a way back.

“Kara, even if you had a plan, it would never work. Your parents were not the accusers.”

She wagged a finger. “Not yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m an angry coit,” she said, using an extreme vulgarity for women. “I’ve been angry for thirteen months. And now I have leverage to make my parents see things in a new light. Chi-Qua

deserves better. If I can make them intervene on her behalf, wil you and her mother go along with it?”

“Chi-Qua used to say your stubbornness was going to bring trouble down upon you someday. She also said you’d probably change the world when it did. I think you believe you have a plan, but reality wil be a painful adversary, I fear. I wil speak to Chi-Qua’s mother, but I wil say nothing to my daughter. If you somehow succeed, we wil consider intervention.”

It was as much as Kara might have reasonably expected. He was right on one count: Trouble was about to take a loud, punishing swipe at her. The next step in her plan required more than effective strategy and verbal gymnastics. She needed the sweet kiss of luck.

More specifical y, stolen secrets from her brother’s memglass.

Betrayal among the Gentry was, Kara discovered, a matter of context. One family might turn upon another without repercussions if the refinery appeared to benefit the social order. But to betray within the family? Such madness demanded swift retribution, anything from long-term exile to inexplicable “suicide.”

Kara understood the potential outcome when she sat before her parents a few days later. Her initial strategy involved recounting a history of refinery they almost certainly knew then reminding them of the long, unshakeable bond between Kara and Chi-Qua.

“She was more than a friend,” Kara told them. “She fil ed my heart with love when I was depressed. When the snobbery and elitism at Vox became too much, we relied on each other’s sense of humor to make light of the sil iness. We made plans for the future.

We wanted to travel beyond Pinchon and see everything Hokkaido offered. We finished each other’s sentences, even without speaking them. If we were blood sisters, we could not have been closer.”

Her father, Perr, cared little for sentiment and appeared distracted as she laid out her case. Her mother, Li-Ann, held a dutiful half-smile and nodded throughout.

“You sound to me like lovers,” Perr said. “In my long experience, those who complete each other’s sentences are romantical y entangled. Hmm. Daughter, were you lovers?”

Though Kara sometimes imagined the possibility, she never

doubted they were meant for others.

“No, Honorable Father. Though some in school were, as you say, entangled, Chi-Qua and I were platonic, but our bond was unbreakable. So much so, I find myself untethered every day. I have not spoken to her in months, but I’m certain she feels the same emptiness and misdirection. If I could have her back in my life, where I see her from morning to night, I’m sure my wounds wil heal. As wil hers. Chi-Qua played no part in her family’s disgrace.”

Perr tapped his desk.

“You are asking for intervention. Even if I could orchestrate the maneuver, Chi-Qua would become the property of another house.

Asking such a thing of the accusers might beg unwanted questions among those seeking to undermine Syung-Low.”

“Honorable Father, I have read historical accounts where one house made a public proclamation as the accusatory party in order