Tabrina’s eyes widened. “You’ve been torturing him? I demand to see him — now!”

Roderick looked away. “Unfortunately, his guilt was too heavy for his heart to bear, and he did not survive.”

The Empress was appalled by the news, but Salvador waved the printed transcript in the air. “Would you like to see what he says about your father?”

“I don’t wish to read lies about my family. Obviously, these charges were fabricated for some reason — and what is that reason, dear husband? So House Corrino can impound the assets of House Péle?”

Roderick interjected, trying to calm her. “With all due respect, Empress Tabrina, this is about honor. Our Emperor relies on the honesty of his subjects — especially the honesty of a family as highly placed as your own. Fraud committed against the Imperial throne is grave treason.”

Salvador studied the transcript, as if looking for something he had missed earlier. “Be glad that Quemada found no evidence of your personal involvement in the scheme, my dear. Taking you as my wife was a necessary business decision, so that House Péle’s wealth could help me hold on to my throne. But this fraud cannot go unpunished. I’ll require a significant portion of your family’s assets as an apology payment before I consider forgiving them.”

“You’ll need proof first!”

He gave her a smile that turned Roderick’s blood cold. “We have sufficient proof, but if you are not satisfied, then I shall summon each member of your family, one at a time, for my Scalpel interrogators to question.” He shrugged. “Or, they can just pay the penalty.”

Chapter 8 (While animals camouflage themselves)

Dorotea both admired and feared the Grand Inquisitor, and she did not like to admit that they had much in common. Each possessed an exceptional skill in separating truth from falsehood, “sorting the wheat from the chaff,” as Quemada liked to say. But their methods differed radically. The Reverend Mother discerned veracity through close observation, while the adept torturer employed the tactics of pain he had been taught in the Suk School’s Scalpel Academy.

Quemada stood near her now on the grass outside the palace, and his very presence seemed to suck warmth out of the air. The tall, black-haired man had a strange charisma, a predatory appeal. He watched Dorotea with a gaze as sharp as a hawk’s talons as she led her orthodox Sisters through a training session in Truthsaying. She wondered if Salvador had sent him to keep an eye on them.

By ordering the massacre on Rossak, the Emperor had tried to wipe out the Sisterhood school without regard to which women were loyal and which secretly supported the use of forbidden computers. He didn’t have the patience to sort wheat from chaff, but Dorotea had convinced him of her own usefulness. The survival of her followers — and the core of the Sisterhood itself — required that she not fail. Through their Truthsaying skill, Dorotea and her companions were beginning to prove their worth, but she had to be careful at all times.

And now the Grand Inquisitor was watching.

On some far-flung world, the defeated Mother Superior Raquella was trying to draw together her scattered Sisters, a sad, pathetic effort. Even the Emperor had lost interest in them.

Dorotea, though, had a hundred Sisters with her now, and her truthsense would help her select new candidates. When she found a protégée with the proper skills, she would supervise her training, then give her the opportunity to consume the Rossak drug when she was ready; if the candidate survived, she would become a Reverend Mother. Dorotea was building a new, strong Sisterhood, like a vibrant tree rising from the roots of an old stump.

First, though, she needed to secure the absolute trust of the Emperor.

For today’s training session, Dorotea had brought eight Sisters who were taught to use their internal skills of observation to discern truth from lies. Sister Esther-Cano led the women through the paces. As one of the last surviving pureblood Sorceresses born on Rossak, she had exceptional lie-detection skills.

Esther-Cano had searched the Imperial prisons and identified six of the most notorious liars on Salusa Secundus — embezzlers, frauds, scam artists. A team of guards had removed them from their confinement, dressed them in business attire or casual clothing, and mixed them into a group of ordinary citizen volunteers. All of them had been given instructions, while the cautious guards watched. The twelve subjects sat on chairs on the lawn, recounting their purported life stories. Some were telling the truth, and some were lying.

“I grew up in the slums of south Zimia, so I began life with a setback,” said a slender, middle-aged woman. Dorotea raised her eyebrows, sure that Emperor Salvador would never admit slums existed anywhere in the capital city. “Stealing was the only way I could survive. I took things from my parents, from my teachers, and from local merchants.” She paused, shuddered, and continued. “Only when I found the truth written in the Orange Catholic Bible did I understand that I needed to save other people, rather than take advantage of them.” Her eyes brimmed with tears as she continued to relate her tale. “I shared the word, preached to anyone who would listen.”

When the woman finished recounting her story, Esther-Cano selected one of her students to comment. Sister Avemar was young and pretty, with dark curly hair and attentive brown eyes. “I don’t trust what she’s saying. Her story is fiction.” She ticked off telltale indicators: perspiration on the brow and lip, a slight trembling of the hands, a change in the tenor of the voice that indicated falsehood, posture, direction of gaze, even the selection of evasive words.

Dorotea smiled, for she had come to the same conclusion.

“Now close your eyes and look inward,” Esther-Cano said to Avemar, while the liar squirmed on her chair, forced to remain silent during the discussion. “Take a moment, and tell me more about this subject.”

Avemar meditated, breathing shallowly, and when she finally opened her eyes, they shone with a new brightness. “Everything this woman said was true, but it was also a lie — a lie by way of concealment. She did engage in many illegal activities as a young woman, she did use religion to turn her life around, she did take up the cause of preaching from the Orange Catholic Bible. But she used her fervor to advance her own cause. She took money from her faithful listeners under false pretenses.”

The woman on the chair flushed, squirmed, and finally nodded. Avemar pointed out, “The tears pouring down her cheeks are real.”

“Very good,” Esther-Cano said. “Concealment can be as great a lie as an overt falsehood.”

Next, an elderly man in another chair said in an accented voice, “My life history is not interesting at all. After serving in the armed forces of Emperor Jules, I attended the Zimia college to study accounting. After graduating, I worked for an export company on Ecaz for years, then took a similar position on Hagal. My wife and I accumulated a nest egg by honest means, then retired here on Salusa.”

Esther-Cano indicated for another man to tell his story, so the students had two to consider at the same time. The next speaker was a technician who maintained the Emperor’s lion-drawn royal carriages. He tried to elicit a chuckle as he recounted the time a male lion tried to mount a female lion in heat while both of them were in harness; they overturned the whole carriage with two footmen inside.

After Reverend Mothers critiqued the stories, the other test subjects told their tales until all twelve had spoken. Dorotea watched, easily drawing the correct conclusions. Every one of the subjects told falsehoods or exaggerated to some degree; it didn’t matter whether they were criminals or ordinary citizens. She was also pleased to see that the other Sisters were gradually learning to utilize their instincts and subconscious thoughts to ascertain information.