by C. G. Hatton
Kilkenny gave a slight nod of his head. I couldn’t figure him out. He wasn’t a stuffed suit like most of the corporate types I’d encountered, and he wasn’t military. Far from that. He was more like one of the Science types I’d run into on the Alsatia.
He’d been polite, accommodating, demure in the welcome he’d offered me. And so far the conversation had just been amiable small talk. Nothing much from Mrs K and just amenable pleasantries from Mr K. Then he hit me between the eyes.
“So, Felix…” He reached for a basket of bread rolls, taking one and offering the assortment to me as he looked right at me. His voice was smooth, confidence born of money and power. “…tell me, where do you stand on the axiom of integrated preprepositional trade that underlies the twenty second pact of Nocturn?”
Chapter 12
Nocturn? What? I glanced up to where Sienna was standing on guard, up on a balcony overlooking the veranda, household security either side of her, assault rifles evident, even in this safe haven. There were automated defences on the grey tiled roof. Not totally subtle. As if they needed a show of strength even here in this private place. Security hadn’t just been increased at corporate headquarters in the capital.
Mr K’s question was a stark reminder that I was not in fact in safe territory here at all.
I rested down my fork, slow and steady, and reached for a roll with a muttered thank you, tracking through my memory as I made a mess of tearing the soft, warm bread in two and placing it carefully on my plate.
I could almost feel Imogen holding her breath next to me, willing me to be smart, and not a smart ass.
“It’s flawed,” I said.
There was a second of absolute silence when even the staff stopped moving, as if I’d stunned them all into disbelief.
“Flawed?” Mr Kilkenny put down the basket of bread rolls as if I’d just told them the sun in their system was about to go nova.
“Fundamentally flawed.” I kept my voice calm. I’d read something about it somewhere. Some teacher at the missionary school had mentioned it scathingly one day. And I had seen Hil’s essay even if it was just a glance. The dilemma I had was that it was deemed flawed by Imperial economic theorists because Wintran corporate structure was biased towards individualism, not cooperation. Nocturn advocated liaison by a neutral but it wasn’t that simple.
Mrs Kilkenny was being attended by a member of staff who was filling her glass. She raised her eyes to pierce me with a stare. “And would you care to justify that position, Felix…?”
She was even more elegant and scathingly icy than Sotheby had ever managed to pull off in her charade as the dastardly socialite mother-figure of the Dennison family.
I stayed cool and steady, meeting the woman full on, eye to eye. We could have drawn pistols and fired at each other right then.
“It was originally drafted by Ballack,” I said. “That fact alone negates potential benefit to either party, whatever side of the line, because a trade negotiation under Nocturn will always weigh in favour of the Merchants’ Guild.”
There was another pause as they all stared at me.
For all I knew, I could have been talking total bullshit, a nonsense amalgamation of all the different ridiculous theories schoolteachers yapped on about.
I reached for a knife, the wrong one evidently, as Imogen neatly and surreptitiously nudged a different one beneath my fingers, and set about trying to butter a bread roll with only one hand.
My heart was pounding. If they saw through the bullshit, there was a real danger they’d see through everything else.
But I glanced up to see Imogen’s father let a smile cross his eyes as he nodded, slow and ponderous. “Well done. Not far from my own standpoint, Felix.” He gave his wife a raise of the eyebrows. “We seem to have common ground in our beliefs on how this galaxy should function.”
As if a button had been pressed, some monumental milestone passed, the staff began to hustle again, taking dishes and replacing them, Imogen’s little sister giving me a huge and theatrical wink as she reached for a plate of weird seafood creatures and offered it to me. Beatrice was only eleven, a whirlwind of energy and sophistication beyond her years. She was exactly how I imagined Freddie could have been if she’d been born into a life like this instead of a war-torn shithole that had got her killed.
I shut away the dark shadow that fluttered in my chest, closed down the freaky ass paranoia that I was going to screw this up, and took a single spikey shell that was dripping with garlic butter, placing it next to the cucumber and giving Bea a wink in return.
Imogen was smiling at us. She had her hair piled high again. I had no idea how she’d had time to get cleaned up and do that, in the time I’d been pushed to grab a quick shower and get changed.
Her father took a sip of his wine and nodded to a server who piled more pasta onto his plate. He nudged it with his fork and didn’t look up as he threw in the next hand grenade. “I understand you and your brother are quite the heroes of the rugby field.” He turned to Mrs K. “Zurich just took the Seniors’ Centenary Trophy.”
It didn’t help that a member of staff chose that exact moment to lean over my shoulder to top up my glass with sparkling water. I flinched, having to force my heart rate to calm. They backed away, leaving the back of my neck prickling.
“It must have been close,” Mrs Kilkenny murmured, looking down her exquisite nose at the exquisite food on her plate. I could almost hear the wheels whirring in her mind. If Zurich had taken the trophy that meant we… I… had beaten Neuchâtel. And that meant I’d beaten Aries boy.
Imogen beamed. “Thirty-seven eleven,” she said with such aplomb it made me blush.
Mr K nodded in confirmation.
“And Fe scored twenty three of those points,” she added.
If anything, Mrs K seemed even less impressed but she was smart enough to realise that I was a piece in the game suddenly and not to be discarded as easily as she’d been presuming. She took back control with a withering, “How adorable. Neuchâtel has had it coming, I’m sure.” And she turned away, as if that was it. Her whole assessment of me.
I was sitting there with the neat little cube of evil cucumber still on my fork, tie knotted too tight around my neck, concentrating on breathing, more exposed than I’d been even at Westinghouse.
Kilkenny shook his head, disparaging. “And then Westings gets thrashed by Sacred Hearts. Again.” He raised his glass. “In my time…”
Imogen was right next to me. With no warning, her hand gripped my thigh beneath the table. I almost yelled out. She had a perfectly respectful demeanour fixed on her face as she attended her father’s every word, as she connected privately through the Senson, to me only, and sent, “Wait for it…” taking a delicate sip from her glass, wine even if it was watered down into a spritzer.
“Westings,” Kilkenny said, voice firmer as if he knew exactly what his daughter was doing, “…in my time was the team to beat, and upstarts like Sacred Hearts, for god’s sake, were lucky to get a place at the table. Don’t worry, you’ll take it next year. With your brother at the helm, not even St Augusta’s will have a chance.”
I had the damned cucumber half way to my mouth when he said it. I froze, glanced from him to Imogen, avoiding Mrs K but feeling her eyes on me as my cheeks burned with heat even more than before. “I’m… we…”
Imogen hid a smile with her glass.
“Blackstone answers to a board of governors,” her father said, reaching for a bowl of fat green olives. “You have an impressive grade point average, young man. And I heard you can run ten k in twenty eight minutes. You and your brother will be back at Westinghouse within a month. Now… what do you two have planned for tomorrow?” He held the plate out to me. “Olive?”
The question about Nocturn wasn’t the only one Redmon Kilkenny threw at me over that first night’s dinner. He fired equally as tough interrogations at his two daughters as well, a regular ritual from the feel of it, and they responded with someti
mes rote replies and sometimes highly considered responses that garnered approval with smiles and laughs all round. Even Mrs K softened a couple of times. They made fun of me but it was gentle. It was warm. At one point, Kilkenny gestured towards me and muttered, “Lose the tie, for god’s sake, boy.” I must have stiffened visibly because Sienna sent a gentle, “Go with it, kid. You deserve a break.”
“I still need to…” I sent back. I’d had a brief peek at their systems when we’d arrived at the house. The AI was shit hot, I knew that even though I hadn’t so much as nudged it yet.
Imogen squeezed my leg again.
Sienna gave me a casual wave, and sent with a smile, “You don’t. Enjoy your evening. Work can start tomorrow.”
I loosened off my shirt collar and breathed.
The sun had set and night had well and truly drawn in by the time the cheesecake was served. It was ridiculously good. Beat the rat pack bars of chocolate I used to steal from the troops on Kheris. I was tempted to hide a chunk of it in a napkin and courier it back to Maisie, but even that fast flash of a stray thought made my cheeks flush, sitting there as I was with Imogen’s hand still resting on my thigh.
I was doing fine until Mrs K asked me what I’d be specialising in for my final two years of school.
I was never going back to school. Anywhere. If I could help it. I forced myself to look up with an amenable smile and lied with an enthusiastic, “Engineering.”
Don’t ever tell Thom Garrett I said that. He’ll lynch me.
Imogen’s mother looked unimpressed until I added, staying nonchalant as I used a tiny fork to slice off a miniscule piece of cheesecake, “Deep spacers. I want to travel.”
“Military?” Mrs K asked, narrowing her eyes as if it was the most despicable thing she’d heard all evening.
Imogen’s father almost choked on his mouthful of wine.
I laughed, genuinely laughed. “No.”
Imogen connected privately, at the same time her hand moved higher up my thigh, and murmured, “I think you’d look good in a Navy uniform.”
“I wouldn’t,” I sent back. “Believe me, I wouldn’t.”
Mr K composed himself. “I don’t think young Felix here is the type to be taking orders from anyone.”
Mrs Kilkenny was still looking at me as if she couldn’t believe they’d let me into their home. “No, I’m sure he isn’t.”
We were still sitting there as darkness closed in, lights and candles flickering into life on the veranda. I was starting to think they were never going to stop talking but eventually a member of staff approached Mr Kilkenny and spoke discretely in his ear. Mr K pushed away his glass and plate, and placed his napkin on the table as he stood.
“Back to work, I’m afraid,” he said and looked across at his eldest daughter. “Well done, my dear. He is every bit as bright and charming as you described. A great improvement on that brash boy of Aries.” He raised his eyebrows to his wife, patted Bea on the shoulder and walked away chuckling to himself.
Mrs K excused us from the table with a neat folding of her napkin. Ordeal over. For the night at least.
The staff shooed me from the table when I tried to help them clear the dishes. Imogen laughed and pulled me away. Bea gave me a hug and whispered with a big grin, “I like you,” turning to her sister and saying loud enough for me to hear, “Can we keep him?” She got a shove and disappeared off inside after her father.
Mrs Kilkenny was watching us with a frown. She slid elegantly between us, brushing her daughter aside and murmuring, “Come walk with me, Felix. I believe we have business of our own to discuss.”
My stomach tightened. So I wasn’t getting off that easily. And apparently work wasn’t going to wait until tomorrow.
“You go,” Imogen said quietly. “I’ll see you later?”
There was a suggestive lift to her voice.
I nodded, sucked in a deep breath and turned to the woman who was probably fifth, maybe sixth in line of importance in United Metals in the whole galaxy… UM, the Wintran mega-corporation that had ignited the rebellion on Kheris two years ago, the corporation that harboured the fabled amulet in its high security headquarters right here on Winter, the amulet I was determined to steal from under their noses, even if it killed me.
Chapter 13
Mrs K walked through the grounds with a supreme confidence that I was right at her heels, like a trained puppy, trotting along behind her.
The paths were lined by low stone walls, snow-covered gardens beyond, but the pavements were clear, warmed by some hidden mechanism. Even so the evening air chilled fast as we left the surrounds of the house, not exactly alone. There were guards stationed within sight, discrete movement either side of us as we were tracked by others. I was probably in the crosshairs of someone’s sights. Like I could be a threat to her. As if anyone would ever dream of using a sixteen-year-old kid as an undercover assassin…
We ended up at a fountain, a stone statue of some ancient old Earth goddess holding a jug that spilled sparklingly pure water in droplets down into a basin, all lit to perfection by tiny spotlights. It felt incongruous. As if there was still some yearning for the old planet even amongst such an extravagant show of the rebellious, divisive, ostentatious nature of corporate Winter.
Mrs K took a moment to look up at the statue, breathing deeply as if having to inhale calm from the atmosphere before she could deal with me, then she turned to lean back against the stone edge of the fountain and regarded me with a look that was pure disdain.
“So… DK Pharmaceuticals of Earth.” It wasn’t a question. “Were you both hoping that piece of information might pass me by?”
I didn’t know what to say but she didn’t let me speak anyway.
“Let’s not beat around the bush here, Felix…”
I don’t think it would have been possible to drip more disgust into the way she said my name. My fake name.
She raised her chin. “You will not be going back to Westinghouse,” she said, her tone razor sharp. “I know exactly what you and your brother did there. And I know the board of governors. Every one of them. Personally. You will not be going back there and you will not become anything more than a summer fling with my daughter. A one-off. Do you understand?”
I opened my mouth even though I had no idea what I was going to say.
She stopped me with a raised hand. “You have no future here. One summer. I’ll grant you that. I will not risk a diplomatic incident by sending you home, but whatever game my daughter is playing, and trust me, this is just a game the darling girl is playing, I have no time for it. That Imogen chose to invite you, and only you, over Akihiro and her other friends this summer…” She rolled her eyes. “My daughter is playing games with you, my boy. Don’t be fooled by it. She is trying my patience. You are eye candy. Pleasant eye candy, I admit, even if your table manners leave a lot to be desired. But, trust me, you are a diversion and nothing more.”
I couldn’t help biting. “Because I’m not Wintran?”
She laughed. “My dear boy, you are as naive as you look. I am familiar with your family. I’m well acquainted with their standing in the galaxy. I’m surprised they extend themselves so by presuming to send you and your brother to Westinghouse.”
Her tone made it clear what the real issue was here. I had to stifle a laugh myself. It wasn’t that I was from Earth that was offending her, it was that the Dennisons weren’t wealthy enough for her. Christ, if I could have thrown the actual financial worth of the Thieves’ Guild at her, she would have been beside herself.
She straightened. “Westinghouse has standards,” she said. “And I’m not surprised that you couldn’t handle it.” She stood and walked past me, looking down her nose at me. “Take whatever trade agreements or proposals your family gave you to bring as a peace offering and give them to Mr Kilkenny. I have no interest in such trivialities. Enjoy your summer, Felix Dennison. It’ll be the last time you ever see my daughter.”
I stared after her as s
he disappeared down the path. I shouldn’t have cared. I was there to do a job. It was a tab. And I knew I wasn’t likely to see Imogen ever again once it was done…
But she was waiting for me on the steps and she took me by the hand and murmured in my ear, “Whatever my mother just said, forget it.”
I should have walked away right then.
“Im…”
“I told you, call me Genie.” She kissed my cheek. “My father wants to see you but not for another hour. Come on, I want to show you something…”
She took me out into the grounds, out into the open air where the sky was pitch black above us, only a sprinkling of stars, and she took my hand, turning us around, raising her face to the skies, cheeks flushed, looking upwards intently as if she was searching the far reaches of the galaxy.
“What…?” I started to say but she pressed a finger against my lips and murmured, “Wait…”
I think that was the moment I fell for her, watching her face as she scanned the skies with such wonder glinting in her eyes. She had all the riches and possessions that money could possibly buy and this is what she wanted to share with me.
That was spectacular enough but the aurora, when it appeared in shimmering green veils of light above us, sent shivers down my spine.
She leaned towards me with a soft, “I knew you’d love it,” and she kissed me, taking my breath away further.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to spoil the moment. When I’d told the Kilkennys I wanted to travel, I was serious. That had been my mantra on Kheris, to escape, break free, explore the entire galaxy, find planets that were super cold where the gravity didn’t drag you down… I’d always thought it would be with Maisie but it was Imogen who was giving it to me, here on her home planet of ice and snow, laid out amidst a perfect storm of hyper-charged particles dancing in crazy collision with Winter’s erratic magnetic field.