by Victoria Lee
It was the first time Noam’d ever heard Dara call Lehrer by his actual name.
Lehrer was expressionless. “Perhaps you should stop drinking.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Dara lifted the scotch to his mouth again, but Lehrer moved inhumanly fast. He plucked the glass from Dara’s hand.
Attwood diplomatically chose that moment to disentangle himself from Dara’s grasp.
“Excuse me—” Dara started, but Lehrer shook his head.
“You’ve had enough.”
Dara sneered like he was about to actually argue with Lehrer on that point—but he didn’t, thank god. Maybe this was why he and Ames both wanted Noam to come along so badly—to stop them all from killing each other.
“You know what,” Dara said. Lehrer still stood there, near enough to touch, but Dara hadn’t flinched. Noam couldn’t name the look on his face, Dara’s eyes glittering like black basalt and his chin pointed toward Lehrer. “I have, actually.”
Noam swore he tasted magic in the air, sharp as spilled blood.
Lehrer set the scotch glass on the mantel above the fireplace. “It’s late. We should be getting home.”
Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck.
Noam tried to steady himself from the tequila haze, wishing he had Dara close enough again to keep himself upright.
“You boys can stay here if you like,” General Ames said without getting up. Smoke puffed out from his mouth as he spoke. “We have plenty of guest rooms. What do you say, Dara?”
“Dara will be coming home with me tonight, I think,” Lehrer interrupted smoothly. He put out his cigarette on an ashtray and raised a brow in Dara’s direction.
“Actually . . .” Dara said, but Lehrer shook his head.
“It’s been a while since we’ve spent time together. I feel I’ve been remiss in my duties as your guardian. You’ll spend the weekend.”
Dara looked like he would rather break each of his fingers individually than spend any alone time with Lehrer, but he didn’t argue. A muscle twitched in his cheek as he glanced at Noam instead. “Well, you’ll still ride with us, right, Noam? No point wasting taxi fare.”
“Sure,” Noam said, because the alternative was loitering around here with the general until his car came, and yeah, no.
Dara and Lehrer were both silent on the ride back to the government complex, Dara sitting to Noam’s right and twisted so he could look out the window and not at either of them, Lehrer opposite them reading emails on his phone.
Eventually, and without looking up from his phone, Lehrer spoke. “You will not embarrass me again.”
Something in the pit of Noam’s stomach shriveled, his cheeks going hot. Lehrer couldn’t just be talking to Dara; he had to mean Noam too.
Noam kept staring at them both, waiting for one or the other to speak again, but Lehrer appeared to have said his piece. Dara had his brow pressed against the window now, both hands fisted in his lap.
Noam shut his eyes and tried very hard to concentrate on not puking.
He did eventually, anyway, once he made it back to the barracks—when he had an empty bathroom and what felt like years’ worth of disgust and anger to vomit up.
The general, with all those medals glittering on his uniform.
Ames’s face when she said he killed my mother.
He kept telling himself this was Sacha’s Carolinia, this was what Lehrer’s coup would overthrow.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The day following the dinner party dragged past like molasses. Everything Noam wanted to say about the general stuck in his throat like wet sugar when he met Ames’s gaze. If he told Lehrer, Ames would kill him. But how the hell was Noam supposed to ally with Lehrer, plotting Sacha’s downfall and Lehrer’s subsequent rise to power, when Lehrer’s rule came with a man like that at his side?
Noam walked himself through each option Saturday afternoon, sitting behind the store counter. He chewed his way through three moon pies before he remembered they were coming out of his paycheck and made himself do a round of price stickering instead.
He had to tell Lehrer.
At least Dara will be there, he thought as he headed across the atrium late that night. Dara could back him up.
He evaded the antitechnopathy wards easily this time, letting himself into the west wing as deftly as if he’d had a pass card of his very own. Not that anyone was around to appreciate the feat—it was past ten o’clock. The halls were empty of anyone who might look twice at a young cadet wandering the government complex alone.
He knocked at the door to Lehrer’s study, then hung back, waiting. Could Lehrer hear knocks at the study door from inside his apartment? Maybe Noam should text him or something. Or text Dara.
Only then the door opened, and Lehrer was there—not wearing his uniform or a suit. Just trousers and a cable-knit sweater, looking more like he belonged in someone’s private library than in the Ministry of Defense.
“Noam,” he said, and it was perhaps the first time Noam had ever seen Lehrer caught off guard. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”
“Sort of. Can I come in?”
A part of him wondered if Lehrer was still angry after last night—he still cringed every time he remembered the softness with which Lehrer had spoken in the car, words like ice in his veins.
But Lehrer just stepped aside, gesturing Noam into the darkened study. “Of course. Please.”
This late at night, the room was lit only by a few odd lamps, elongated shadows stretching out on the floor and obscuring Lehrer’s face. He moved through those shadows with the ease of someone who’d had a hundred years to learn the topography of the room. This time Noam paid attention when Lehrer unlocked the wards to his apartment, watching the glitter-gold threads quaver beneath Lehrer’s touch and then dissolve. Even now Noam couldn’t make sense of it. What type of scientific knowledge allowed someone to construct something like this? The ward seemed like it was crafted out of raw magic, not theory.
“How did you do that?” Noam asked. It came out more accusatory than he’d intended. “That, and the antitechnopathy . . . I’m sorry, sir, but—I can’t figure it out.”
Lehrer stepped through the door to his apartment, Noam following bemusedly and trailing his own magic against the withdrawn wards as if that could tell him how they were built. It was only once he was past the doorway, toeing off his shoes in Lehrer’s foyer, that he realized he forgot to touch the mezuzah.
“Telling you would defeat the purpose of having wards, don’t you think?”
You told Dara. Noam bit his cheek over that one.
“In theory,” he insisted.
“In theory,” Lehrer said, “you could build a ward of your own. Imagine an electromagnetic field you maintained around your person like an invisible shield to deflect bullets. Creating it takes magic, but so does releasing it. When you get very good, you can release one part of such a shield while maintaining the rest.”
Wolf scampered out from the other room, skidding a little when he leaped off the rug and onto the hardwood floor. Noam crouched to scratch behind his ears. “That wasn’t electromagnetism, though,” he said, glancing up toward Lehrer.
“No. But you must let me keep some secrets.”
Although Noam had been in Lehrer’s apartment once before, it felt different now that he was here with the intent of staying longer than a few seconds. He drank in the shapes and colors as he followed Lehrer into a sitting room. The whole place was surprisingly simple; what furniture Lehrer did have was clearly antique, the exposed floorboards half-covered with Persian carpets worn along what must be familiar paths. Noam didn’t have to be an expert to know quality when he saw it, even when that quality was likely older than Noam and Lehrer put together.
Lehrer turned to face him, standing there with one hand resting on the back of a sofa. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”
“Noam?” Dara emerged from the hall
way, sleep tousled and tugging a sweater down over his short-sleeved shirt. He scowled, arms folding over his chest. His gaze flicked from Noam to Lehrer, then back.
“Hey, Dara,” Noam said and tried to look casual.
“Hey, yourself. Why are you here?”
“Dara, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” Lehrer said. “You need to rest.”
Noam frowned. “Are you sick?”
“I’m fine. I’ll ask again. Why are you here?”
“Let’s not be rude,” Lehrer chided. He touched Noam’s arm instead, just below the elbow. “Please, Noam, make yourself at home. Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’ll take hot tea,” Dara said before Noam could answer.
Lehrer just kept looking at Noam, though, until at last Noam shrugged and said, “Sure. Thanks. Um. Tea for me too.”
Lehrer allowed them both a cursory smile, then disappeared through a door into a room where Noam sensed metal cutlery and saucepans. There weren’t, he noticed, any tiny hidden circuit boards. If Sacha had bugged Lehrer’s apartment, as Lehrer suspected, he did it without using technology.
“Are you sick?” he asked Dara, moving closer.
Dara shrugged one shoulder. “Not really. Just tired.” His fingers kept picking at the cuffs of his sweater sleeves, pulling at loose threads.
“Have you eaten anything today?” Noam asked suspiciously, but Dara made a face at him.
“Doesn’t matter. You haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m here about General Ames,” Noam said. “About what Ames told us about him. Or told me, rather, since you apparently already knew.” Knew and hadn’t told anyone. Noam tapped his fingers against the seat cushion. “Which, what the hell, Dara?”
Dara stepped closer—though when he spoke, his voice was so low that Noam still had to lean in to hear properly. He was near enough that Noam could smell Dara’s shampoo clinging to his hair. “There’s a reason I didn’t tell anyone, Noam. And you shouldn’t either. Okay?”
“No, not okay! He killed people, Dara, he would have killed Ames too if she hadn’t gotten lucky—”
“I mean it, Noam,” Dara hissed. He grabbed on to Noam’s wrist, fingers pressing in hard. “I know it’s difficult for you to let things go sometimes, but you need to let this go. I will tell the people who need to know, but I’ll tell them in the right way and at the right time. Please just let me handle it.”
“He needs to be punished.” Noam’s eyes prickled with a painful heat, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t just let it go. “He can’t just get away with this.”
“He won’t,” Dara promised.
Noam would kill General Ames himself if he had to. He’d never hated anyone this much. Never mind a fair trial; the general deserved to be in the ground.
“Trust me,” Dara said, and Noam didn’t get a chance to respond, because then Lehrer emerged from the kitchen with a tea tray balanced in hand. Dara took a quick step back, releasing Noam and staring at the floor instead.
“Everything all right in here?” Lehrer asked, glancing dubiously at Noam’s reddened wrist.
“We’re good,” Noam said. He blinked back those furious tears—if he cried in front of Lehrer, he’d fucking shoot himself. “Thanks for the tea.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” Lehrer said. He set the tray down on the coffee table, gesturing for Noam and Dara to come sit.
They did, one on each side of the sofa with an ocean’s space between them. Lehrer took the armchair, surveying them both through the steam drifting up from his tea.
“Did you have something you wanted to tell me, Noam?” Lehrer said at last.
“Yeah, but it . . .” Noam glanced at Dara, who stared back with narrowed eyes. “I . . . should probably tell you some other time. In private.”
Let Lehrer think it had to do with the coup.
Lehrer frowned, tapping one finger against the curve of his mug. “Dara, would you . . . ?”
“No, no, it’s fine, it’s not urgent,” Noam said quickly. “We can talk later.”
“After we spar on Monday, perhaps?”
Noam nodded.
Still, he stayed for half an hour and drank the tea just to be polite, making small conversation about classwork and his part-time job until he could justify excusing himself.
Back in the barracks, he couldn’t meet Ames’s gaze. He stayed out in the common room with Bethany, sharing a bag of Taye’s cinnamon candies until Bethany trailed off to bed. That meant getting cornered by Ames after all, who’d unearthed another bottle of vodka and was making noises about going out to Raleigh.
She’d settled herself on Noam’s lap, legs slung over the arm of the chair and her head against his shoulder. Her breath was hot on the side of his neck. Her hand was on his thigh.
If Noam went with her, he knew what would happen: he’d get drunk, they’d dance, they’d fuck in a dirty bar bathroom.
That wasn’t unappealing, per se; it just . . .
He went to bed early.
Dara returned from his weekend with Lehrer around five Sunday night. He went straight back to the bedroom and didn’t come out for dinner. Noam gathered the whole parental bonding thing didn’t go well.
And then on Monday, Lehrer dismissed Dara from lessons early, leaving him and Noam alone in the study with the last few remnants of Noam’s constructed starlight glittering just below the ceiling. Lehrer reached up and trailed his fingers through them, navigating the constellations.
“How have you been feeling lately?” Lehrer asked, then clarified: “With your magic.”
“Fine. What do you mean?”
Lehrer’s gaze skipped away from the lights, fixing on Noam. “No fevers, no chills, no aches and pains?”
“No.”
“And nothing else either?”
“I haven’t gone crazy yet, if that’s what you mean,” Noam said. He’d been examining the bruise left on his wrist from sparring with Lehrer earlier, a purpling mark that Lehrer hadn’t offered to heal. He rolled his sleeve down now, to look at Lehrer instead. “I’m playing by the rules. Magic only on special occasions.”
Lehrer gave him a crooked smile. “Now why don’t I believe that?”
He didn’t give Noam a chance to respond. Instead he leaned back against the edge of his desk and crossed his arms, surveying Noam with an even expression.
“So. What was it you had to talk to me about? We can go for another walk through the city. Perhaps the fresh air would do us both good.”
It took Noam a second to catch what Lehrer was getting at.
“Oh,” Noam said. “No. I checked. There aren’t any bugs here or in your apartment.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. Very well, we’ll speak freely. Have you given our plan some thought?”
Noam nodded slowly. Hard not to think about it when he’d spent half his evenings sitting at the store register watching Atlantian parents fumble through change on the counter and come up short. Lisa, sugar, go put those canned peas back on the shelf.
“You’re right about Brennan,” Noam said after a second. “He’s not going to do anything big. Now that he’s got that liaison job, he thinks he can make Sacha see reason.”
“That,” Lehrer said, “will never happen.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Noam said, then flushed, because Lehrer—but Lehrer didn’t say a word. “So . . . so, I was thinking that if we want something to happen, we need to make it happen. Things are shitty right now, but they’ve been shitty for a long time. People are used to it.” He smiled, a quick upward flick of his mouth. “Let’s make things worse.”
That got a reaction. Lehrer’s arms uncrossed, hands grasping the edge of his desk. The way he looked at Noam now, it was like he was trying to see past his face and right into his mind. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, you need an excuse to take power, right? We can’t let people get complacent. If we make Sacha seem terrible enough . . . tensions are high already.
It wouldn’t take a lot to push that over the edge.” Noam caught himself fidgeting with the sleeve of his shirt and pressed his palms against his thighs. God, Lehrer was still looking at him like that, like . . . was this too far? Surely not. Lehrer and his brother did a lot worse during the catastrophe. Maybe the situations weren’t comparable, but Lehrer was no saint.
Still, he didn’t speak, so Noam had no choice but to keep going. “When people get angry enough, they’ll protest. Not little skirmishes like what happened with Carolinia First, but massive, organized marches. Sit-ins. Strikes. Last time that happened—I was eight, but I still remember all the soldiers out on the street. Trying to prevent riots, right?”
Lehrer said nothing.
“But those are your men,” Noam went on. “They’re all Ministry of Defense. Shit gets bad, people protest, the army goes out to keep the peace, then—”
“Then things get even worse,” Lehrer finished for him, his voice soft. “Bad enough to incite a riot. With my men already on the streets, we’re positioned to isolate Sacha and his loyalists completely. We will deliver him to the people’s justice.”
Noam nodded. “And when you offer the Atlantians citizenship rights, they’ll beg you to run for office.” He couldn’t help sliding that in there, but Lehrer didn’t disagree, just grinned and straightened away from the desk.
“Very good,” he said. “You have an intellect for politics, Noam. That will serve you well.” He moved closer now, and closer again. Noam felt Lehrer’s magic like this, a constant golden static.
“Tell me,” Lehrer said, “what do you think we should do first?”
Noam told him.
And only after Lehrer drew Noam’s holoreader out from his satchel and watched Noam put their plan into motion did Noam wonder if this is how it happened, how Lehrer won Carolinia the first time. If this was Lehrer’s particular brand of utilitarianism: the first of many sins committed in the name of the greater good.
They had the battery fan up and running by the time Noam got to work the next weekend.
“It’s hotter than Satan’s house cat up in here,” the girl on the previous shift said as she passed Noam the door keys, still waving a folded-up magazine toward her face. Her skin was as red as her hair. “Lord. They still got AC downtown?”