Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4)

by G. S. Jennsen

  “I think it’s sexy when you get sentimental.” I sucked in a breath as her hand scraped down the bare skin of my chest and dipped lower, then matched her maneuver by gripping her ass with both hands and pulling her tight against me. “You can tell me more about these whimsical notions of yours. Later.”

  He stared at his hands, convinced he could still feel the heat of her skin burning against them…but they were cold and clammy. Empty.

  She’d been lying about what she meant, of course, but how much of it? The part where her life was magnificent? Dare he to wonder, the part about loving him? He didn’t know where the lies ended and the truth began, or if there had ever been any truth at all.

  Acid rose to burn his throat, and he gazed longingly at the puddles of sake gleaming in the moonlight spilling through the unshuttered windows. But instead of getting a fresh glass to drown himself in, he grabbed his coat off the floor and headed back out the door.

  Maris answered the door wearing a shimmery silver robe and wild hair made wilder by interrupted sleep. “Dashiel. There are fewer than five people in the universe for whom I will answer the door at this time of night. Fortunate for you that you happen to be one of them.”

  She narrowed her eyes to peer at him suspiciously. “She told you, didn’t she? Everything, I expect?”

  “How the hells should I know? I’m just the court jester. A plaything of the true immortals.”

  “For the record, this is exactly why we never tell anyone about our heritage. Even the best of you lose your godsdamn reasoning minds.” She stepped back and gestured him inside. “Come on in. Would you like a drink?”

  “No.”

  Her step faltered. “No? Interesting. Well, if I’m going to be up at this hour, I’m having one.”

  He grabbed her arm before she could head for the kitchen. “Maris, enough with the performance. I’m not here to cry on your shoulder. I simply need some answers, then I’ll be on my way. Permanently.”

  She gracefully but firmly removed her arm from his grip. “You’re angry at me as well, for keeping my and Nika’s shared and lengthy history from you. It’s a valid response. But you need to realize, there are rul—”

  “Rules. Yeah. Nika mentioned something about those. I don’t give a flying fuck about any rules, but I expect you also don’t give a flying fuck about my opinion on the matter. I must be so pathetic to your eyes, so quaint and…small.”

  “Dashiel, nothing could be further from the—”

  “Do not say ‘truth.’ There’s only one truth I need from you. Nika doesn’t remember, but you do. So, tell me: was I anything at all to her? Anything more than a trifle, an idle amusement to pass a few thousand years playing with?”

  “You really think…don’t be ridiculous. You’re smarter than this.”

  “Apparently not, because she lied to me for over three thousand years. About everything. Her entire life, her entire existence. And I never suspected.”

  “She lied to you about how old she was. Don’t overdramatize.”

  He snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you. Worse, she didn’t merely lie to me about her past, she lied to me about mine.”

  “Yes, she did. But do you understand why?”

  “It’s how you First Genners get your thrills?”

  “Hardly.” Maris propped on the edge of the dining table and sank against it. “And she didn’t lie to you because of any rules, either. There are rules, but she’d have broken them in a second for you. Five-hundred-sixty thousand years ago, Steven Olivaw broke her deceptively tender heart. He selfishly walked out on his life and hers, and he did it because he was a weak man.

  “You are not a weak man, Dashiel, but Nika believed if you knew what he’d done, you would take the guilt of his actions onto your own shoulders. You would become eaten up by the idea that an earlier version of you had let her go.

  “And since she loved you so damn much, she never wanted you to carry such a burden. She recognized that you were not Steven, in the way that only someone who’s witnessed thousands of generations come and go before their eyes can recognize. She never for one second blamed you for his mistakes, and she never wanted you to blame yourself, either.”

  Maris crossed her arms over her chest as a spark of audacity lit her orchid irises. “Do you want to know what the real difference is between living ten thousand years and ten hundred thousand? The accumulation of a greater number of experiences. Nothing more, nothing less. If we are special, it’s on account of who we are and what we’ve done with those experiences, not how long we’ve lived.

  “Nika understood something every First Genner I know understands, and few others ever do: the past has no claim on the present. This moment is all that matters. This moment, and the ability to experience the next one that follows it. There, now you can be as wise as any First Genner.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But she could have told me the truth about her own past.”

  “No, she couldn’t have, because it was all intertwined for her. There was no way she could have talked forthrightly about the first 200,000 years of her life without also talking about Steven. To share one but not the other with you would have forced her to actively lie far more than simply omitting both did. He signified her past, but you were her present. And her future.”

  Maris approached him and took his hand, and he was too wound up in his own turbulent thoughts to stop her. “Do you truly want all your future moments to be spent without her at your side?”

  “No, but—”

  “No ‘buts.’ The past has no claim on you, and it is for you to decide what you want your future to be. This is the greatest—no, the only—power any of us truly have.”

  He’d thought that was what he’d been doing these last millennia, dammit. But he’d believed in a lie.

  He stepped away, out of her grasp. “You certainly do weave an enchanting tale with your eloquent words delivered in dulcet tones alongside a soft stroke of my hand. It’s your stock in trade, after all. But I don’t know why I even came here. You are the most gifted storyteller I have ever met, but at the end of the day ‘storyteller’ is just a pretty word for liar. I can’t believe anything you say.”

  She smiled, and it conveyed an aching wistfulness. But she was a master actor, so it would. “You can try, and see how it goes.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  NESTED ARGUMENTS

  DAYS UNTIL RASU DEADLINE: 22

  13

  * * *

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  “Ugh! Ugh, ugh, ughhhhh….”

  Adlai stopped midway down the hall leading to the Justice command center in the Pavilion. The muffled groans had come from his left. Ahead was a door to a storage closet, he thought, which was an odd place for groaning to originate—the unpleasant kind, anyway.

  “Ugh!”

  And yet. He cautiously opened the door and peeked inside.

  Perrin spun around and, on seeing him, darted forward to grab him in a hug. “Hey!”

  “Hey.” His face screwed up in confusion, though the happy feel of her in his arms made a convincing argument not to worry about any trouble.

  She stepped back wearing an innocent smile. “How’s your morning so far?”

  “The usual. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, why?”

  “Well, you were groaning before I came in. And kind of shouting. Also, this is a storage closet.”

  “Right….” She nodded. “I was just venting a little. The bureaucracy in Admin is absurd! I can’t get anything done for these poor former popsicles without three layers of approval and seventeen forms! Let me tell you, if we need Admin’s authorization to save our civilization, we are so screwed.”

  “I expect we’ll bypass them as necessary. And the storage closet?”

  “I was coming to see you down the hall, but then I didn’t want to burst in and dump all my problems on you, when I know you have plenty of your own. So, I sneaked in here to get over myself before I
saw you. But you caught me.”

  He shook his head and gently grasped her shoulders. “Perrin, sweetheart, you don’t need be perfect around me. If you’re having a bad day, I want to know. I lo—” he cleared his throat, suddenly grateful the storage closet was only dimly lit “—like you for who you are, not some idealized version of yourself you pretend to be.”

  “Oh! Well…” she scoffed playfully “…I’m glad. Fair warning, you might regret saying that once you get an earful of a few of my stream-of-consciousness rants, but I’ll hold you to it.”

  “Please do.” He drew her closer for a kiss that he wished could last several hours longer. “We should get to the command center. Or I should. Five thousand new things to do and all.”

  “Sure.” She reached around him to wave the door open, and they stepped out—

  “There you are!” The exclamation was delivered twice, in overlapping tones, one melodic and the other gruff, each originating from different directions.

  To the left, Julien exited the command center and jogged toward them. To the right, Maris glided down the hallway from the lift waving at them.

  He and Perrin exchanged a dubious glance while they waited for everyone to reach them.

  Maris arrived first. “Good morning, Adlai. Perrin, can I borrow you for a minute? I have a tiny favor to ask of you.”

  “Of course.” Perrin squeezed his hand. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay.” He watched her walk off for a long second, then turned to meet Julien halfway. A list of possible disasters the uni may be here to inform him of scrolled through his mind. “What do you need?”

  “A favor.”

  Adlai chuckled to himself as they walked into a command center buzzing with activity. “Ask away.”

  Julien dropped into a chair and leaned forward displaying an intensity of purpose. “I need for us to let Gemina out of confinement.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I need her back at work and doing her job on Kiyora. Half of the shit I’m dealing with right now is due to logjams in the Administration system. In good times it wouldn’t be a huge problem, but people who are spooked and angry are not particularly patient with inefficient services.”

  Perrin’s mini-rant replayed in Adlai’s mind. As soon as they could afford the effort, it sounded as if Administration was due for a thorough scrubbing, Asterion-style. “Gemina has capable officers who work under her. They should step up and get the job done.”

  “I already tried talking to them. Can you imagine what it must be like to work for Gemina?”

  He scowled. “I’d prefer not to.”

  “Her subordinates are either whimpering in a corner, terrified she’s going to break out of jail and come dismember them, partying in the streets like it’s the end of the world or, more commonly, simply clueless about the details of much of the work she did. She didn’t let anyone get on the inside. Adlai, Gemina’s done nothing but cooperate with us. I don’t believe she’s a clear and present danger to the Dominion.”

  “It’s not about that, Julien. Objectively, her crimes are easily as serious as Satair’s are, and we’ve locked him in a dungeon and thrown away the proverbial key. The Guides ordered people kidnapped, rendered comatose and shipped off to the Rasu, but Gemina did all those things. Now, I appreciate that she’s contrite about it, and I’m willing to give her an extra half-hour in the sun a day or some dessert with her dinner as a reward, but we cannot set her free.”

  Julien thought on it. “What if we frame it as a sort of work-release program? Make it part of her sentence? We’ll stick a tracker in her and glue guards to her ass the same as we have with Delacrai, and they’ll escort her from her cell to her office—or here—and back again every day. It won’t be a reward; it will be a service she’s required to perform for the Dominion and its citizens as a facet of her punishment.”

  Adlai didn’t care for it, in part because Gemina had played him at Nika’s expense, to his continuing shame. But as a Justice Advisor, this was not a reason to deny Julien’s request. “If Selene and Harris agree to it as well. And we make the sentence modification official, lest anyone later accuse us of giving her special treatment.”

  “Agreed. Give me half an hour to get everything in order.”

  KIYORA

  Gemina’s cell sat at the end of the third floor of the Kiyora Justice Center detention wing. Most of the cells were empty thanks to the virutox cleanup, and the hall was quiet. Peaceful.

  She lounged on her cot, her back propped against the wall and her knees pulled halfway up to her chest. A pane floated in front of her. Her access to the nex web was heavily restricted, but it seemed she’d managed to find something worth reading.

  Adlai stood outside the cell for five seconds before she finally looked over at him, an expression of forced boredom on her face. “Yes?”

  “Get dressed. You’re needed at your office.”

  “Ooh, an adventure!” No one would ever mistake the woman’s dripping sarcasm for genuine excitement.

  “No, not an adventure. You’ll do your part to keep the wheels of the government turning on Kiyora, unlock all your secret files and procedures, and show your subordinates how to use them without you. Then you’ll return to your cell every evening.”

  She swung her legs off the side of the cot. “It’s so nice to be needed. I take it things aren’t going well out there?”

  “Oh, but they are. Superbly, in fact. The occasional hitch was to be expected, but you’re going to help us clear up many of those.”

  She stood, but eyed him doubtfully. “What’s in it for me?”

  “A change of scenery, some fresh air and the heartwarming feeling that comes from improving the lives of your fellow citizens.”

  “Wow, Adlai. You really know how to woo a girl’s heart.”

  He gritted his teeth to keep from retorting that he was currently wooing a girl’s heart just fine, thank you very much. He should have let Julien deal with her. “Again, get dressed. And understand something: if you fail to cooperate or sabotage our efforts in any way, it will result in what privileges you have enjoyed until now being revoked.”

  Her lips pursed; the outward bravado wavered, and she looked almost…not beaten. Frightened. “Don’t worry. I’m quite skilled at doing as I’m told.”

  14

  * * *

  NIKA’S FLAT

  “—you all right?”

  Perrin’s voice fought to penetrate the fog of sleep, yet Nika clung stubbornly to its comforting peacefulness. Only when a hand jostled her shoulder did she open her eyes.

  Polished wood flooring greeted her. Scattered data weaves upon it and sideways shelves above it. No, not sideways. She was sideways…

  …she’d fallen asleep on the floor of the library. Or possibly passed out.

  “Are you all right? Did something happen?”

  Dashiel. The crushing weight of the events of last night swept into her awareness so forcefully she felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. It had all gone so horribly wrong, and she had no clue how to fix it. The library and everything it represented promised the wisdom of the ages—the answers to every question that had ever lingered on her tongue—but it had come at the price of what she held most dear.

  A quick status check confirmed she still had no messages from him, and he was still blocking receipt of messages from her. Lovely.

  She winced as she pushed up to a sitting position and rotated her left shoulder to work out a few of the aches brought on by using her arm as a pillow. A data weave cut painfully into her left hip; she glanced down at it.

  Date: Y94,033.188 A4

  Subject: Encounter with New Intelligent Species (Sogain)

  She nudged the weave discreetly to the side. “I’m fine. I was reading late into the night and…I must have fallen asleep. Is it morning?”

  “Ten o’clock already.”

  “Damn. I guess I was more tired than I realized.”

  Perrin fold
ed her legs beneath her and studied Nika suspiciously. “What are you doing? What is this room? Nobody’s heard from you since yesterday afternoon.”

  “It’s a library of journals that Nika Kirumase and her ancestors wrote. I’m trying to learn from the history contained in them.” She sighed tiredly. “All those people at the Pavilion? All the Advisors and their officers? They all know me, but I don’t know them. I’m supposed to be a diplomat, but to be a good one I need knowledge. Information. I need all the secrets buried in these journals.”

  “Or, you can use your stellar instincts about people. You didn’t become the leader of NOIR and topple the Guides because you had handy reference factoids about people catalogued and cross-referenced in your mind.”

  “I know, but…” she contemplated the mess of weaves lying on the floor “…has Adlai told you how he became an Advisor?”

  Perrin shook her head.

  “He was a senior officer in the Justice Division here on Mirai, and he spent months chasing down this ring of slavers. They were dosing people, kidnapping them and blanking them, then selling them for sexual favors and forced labor on the adjunct worlds. He cracked the case wide open.”

  “That sounds exactly like something he’d do. But—”

  “Oh, and it turns out I never trusted Satair. I was suspicious of him millennia ago. I guess it was those stellar instincts at work, huh?”

  “Probably.” Perrin’s expression grew sympathetic, bordering on nurturing. “Nika, is this about Dashiel? I heard something might have happened between the two of you. Something not great.” She tilted her head to the left for emphasis, which was when Nika remembered the empty bottle of wine—the second empty bottle of wine. This one had ended up tipped on its side against one of the shelves.