Protection III

"They're clones, all of them. Copies." Li nodded. This put an incredibly new perspective on what he had known previously about the duchess.

All this time, he had thought she had altered the minds of others to secure her position. But had it been that in actuality, she had kidnapped threats to herself and simply created a clone of them more favorable to her? Had Alexei been wrong to assume that she had mind bending powers under her disposal?

No, Li had to think safer. He had to assume she had both, but at the same time, he tempered his caution with logic. If truly either mind control or cloning had no limits, then she could have posed a legitimate threat to him by now. She could have taken over his mind or cloned an exact copy of him. 

But her powers could not match up to Li. It was already evident from what Launcelot had said that the cloning had some level of imperfection inherent in it. There were likely many more restrictions.