Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

  “Why are you here, Adept Emerson?”

  “Three questions in one! Why am I here in Haven? Why was I in this meeting? Why am I still in this room?” She leaned back, aping Skylur’s mannerisms and making a steeple of her fingers. “I’m here in Haven because there are no Warders anymore, and Altau offered. I was here in this room to make sure Correia didn’t lie outright. And Skylur left me here to talk to you, to calm you down if you needed it.”

  “He pulled off a trick with Basilikos?”

  She nodded confirmation.

  “What if Correia had gone for it? Agreed to take my Blood in exchange?”

  “Gone for what, Amber? Skylur didn’t offer anything. She thought he did, but she was wrong. He was running that conversation from the start.”

  “Well, what about the statue? Skylur was shaken when she chose that.”

  “He looked shaken, I’ll agree. He knew it would cost something like that, but by choosing it, she’s revealed her own weakness. Basilikos is as fragmented as Skylur designed it to be, and she hopes that this symbol will unite it. It’s a powerful symbol, the original statue of the Hidden Path. It will speak powerfully to the subconscious of older Athanate. It’s true, there has been a heavy cost to this, but I think Skylur believes it’s bearable and justifiable.”

  I let myself relax a little more. Skylur was one step ahead of everyone. If he never intended to offer my Blood—I felt uneasy again just at the thought of Correia biting me—then what had his intention been when he’d said I would obey? He’d made me angry. I’d used that anger to recover. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was the quickest way to help me without compromising anything else. Yeah, make that several steps ahead of me.

  And in the meantime, I had an Adept to question and about a thousand questions to ask that were closer to home than why Skylur offered a sanctuary to Adepts and what an Adept might get from it.

  “If he’s not right in this call,” Emerson was saying thoughtfully, eyes unfocused on the empty fireplace, “then heaven help us. At best, we will become like footless, grey ghosts, forever fleeing the anger of the blind eagle.”

  She shivered.

  “I have so many questions, Adept Emerson.”

  “I imagine you have.” Her mouth twisted, highlighting the fine wrinkles that ran across her face and gathered at the corners of her eyes; a woman fond of laughing, much like Mary. “Very few of which we’ll have time for. Call me Alice.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I bet I can predict what you’ll ask first.”

  I shuffled questions in my head, just because.

  “Do you have contacts with Adepts in the Empire of Heaven?”

  She laughed again. “You did that quite deliberately. What on earth would you—no, no time for that. No, I don’t. Sorry.”

  I leaned back in the chair. I never seemed to get the answers I needed. I tried another. “What’s a spirit guide?”

  “Goodness! No time for that either. You’ll have to come back and talk to me about that.”

  “What did you mean in the Assembly when you said I was thrice bound?”

  “Ah. That was all three of you. Yes, you would want to know that. And we don’t have—”

  “Please.”

  “Very well. I wish you joy of the knowledge.” She bowed her head. “What’s binding? That which holds you to your House—the impress in your head? Or love—the impress on your heart? Or duty—the impress on your soul? None and all of these. And what must Basilikos say, who know not love? Or those that know not true duty?”

  She stopped abruptly, rocking her body to and fro on her chair. “It’s difficult to speak in modern English sometimes. I don’t know how the elder Athanate manage it. Perhaps because it’s all new language to them.” She sighed. “It’s difficult to speak of binding at all. It’s too easy for Panethus to fall into seeing binding as love. Accept that as error, and ponder on what Basilikos preach to Aspirants. They talk of the opposite of love; hate. And thus they are blind too.”

  “Binding is the dark sister of love and hate, the daughter of need and the mother of spirit. It is anchored in desire and obsession, fascination and passion, but it is none of these. An Athanate may be bound by their head, or their heart, or their soul. Few are bound by all three, and fewer still share bindings three ways.”

  “I’m triple bound? And to both kin?”

  “And they to each other, Amber. I made a joke—three bindings, three ways.”

  To each other? I wish. Were we talking about the same Jen and Alex?

  She tilted her head. “Do you understand?”

  “The binding bit? It’s like one of those things you understand until you try to explain it,” I said. “Or you see it until you try and look at it. I’ll stop hunting it and let it sneak up on me.”

  “Yes! Exactly!” She sat straight, clasping her hands in her lap. “I forget that even though you’re a child as an Athanate, you’re not as a human.”

  I tried to settle my thoughts into some kind of order. “So I did this to them? I bound them to me?”

  “Not precisely.” She hesitated. “I can tell you feel guilty, as if you forced something on them. Absolutely not. They bound themselves to you as much as you did. And in turn, remember, they’ve bound you.” My face must have reflected my hesitation. At loss to get through, Alice looked up at the ceiling for inspiration. “You were the architect and builder, but theirs was the material.”

  I could be happy with that, once I really believed it. Maybe I needed to let that belief sneak up on me too.

  “Stop overanalyzing it, Amber. Goodness, if the first cavewoman who picked up a rock to defend her children had had to sit back down and puzzle out why the rock was hard, maybe we’d still be food for lions.”

  I managed a laugh at that. Yes, I’d let it sneak up on me.

  “So, what was my first question supposed to be?”

  She smiled tightly, the lines at the corners of her eyes gathering like a gossamer fishing net.

  Bian stormed back in alone, her face set in anger.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t have much time,” Alice said, and we stood. She reached out and took my hands. “Come back and talk to me. Do not let any of the old ones get beneath your mental defenses, whatever anguish your mistakes are causing you. They might mean to help, but what you are, here,” she let go and touched the side of my forehead gently, “is like soft wax. They will leave their impression on you and destroy what is forming there.”

  “But Diana—” I couldn’t walk around forever with this bedlam threatening to break out in my head at every turn. And threatening to poison my relationship with Alex.

  “Diana alone might be skillful enough to not harm you. But she is not here. Be brave. Be strong. Be patient. Come and talk to me; about workings and spirit guides and why you want to talk to the Chinese. And no aural sex.”

  “No what?”

  “Aural.” She spelled it out. “Opening your aura makes you vulnerable.”

  She saw my blank look and sighed in exasperation.

  “Sex, all right? It’s best at the moment to keep away from physical intimacy, basically,” she said primly. “It lowers your mental barriers. That could be dangerous.”

  “Adept Emerson, Skylur wants you in the planning room,” Bian said.

  Alice nodded and walked off with a last glance.

  “She fill your head with her indecipherable mutterings?” Bian asked as the door closed. If she’d truly been the leopard whose spots she wore, her tail would have been lashing from side to side.

  “Not indecipherable, so much as difficult to grasp.” I’d never seen Bian upset like this.

  “There was probably a very good reason they threw her off the Mayflower.” Bian glowered at the door.

  “Bian, what’s wrong?”

  “Tell me you’re all right first.” Bian turned her glower on me. “You nearly came apart back there.”

  “I…yeah, you all caught me off balance. Sorry. And Alice is right, something up here
,” I tapped the side of my head, “tells me it isn’t ready to give Blood. Skylur’s trick freaked me.”

  “Emerson was talking about someone getting in your head, not your jugular.”

  “But something she said earlier makes me think it’s all part of one thing. When you feed, you feed on emotion as well, don’t you? Isn’t that just using telergy? When you feed, aren’t you in your kin’s head too?”

  “Maybe. Anyway, the damage has been done; Naryn, not a fan of yours. He thinks you’re one step away from rogue. We need to get you away from here before he persuades Skylur to lock you up.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “The Diakon.”

  “But—”

  “Yes, I was the Altau Diakon.”

  “Oh, God, Bian, is this my fault?”

  “No.”

  She made to move away, but I grabbed her. “Tell me what the hell happened,” I said. I switched to my bad Vietnamese. “Talk to me, little sister.”

  Her eyes darkened like a night storm, but she didn’t pull away. I waited and let the anger slowly subside. Then I hugged her.

  “Careful,” she breathed onto my neck. “I might get to like this.”

  If I was being teased, she was better. And it was worth it, despite the instinctive cringing away from her fangs that I had to control.

  “It’s not you, or me, it’s just frigging politics.” She sighed. “Naryn used to be the Altau Diakon. He’d been with Skylur forever. When Skylur started setting up sub-Houses secretly, Naryn was the obvious choice to run them and I was chosen to be the new Altau Diakon. But now we’re trying to re-integrate everyone and all those sub-Houses want the person they know. It’s not trust really, it’s…familiarity. Anyway, Naryn’s back as Diakon for the moment, and I’m tasked with local issues—the Matlal remnants, you, and so on.”

  “I’m a task?” I grinned.

  “A damned awkward one.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “But so tasty.”

  I figured the hug had achieved its aim and let her go before she raised the stakes again.

  “Naryn is a serious problem for you, Round-eye. Don’t give him the slightest excuse.”

  “I can’t avoid coming here. I can’t avoid Skylur. I’ve got Larimer’s response to give him. He refused to help find the Matlal Athanate—”

  “Already done. Alex told me. And about the colonel.”

  I chopped down on the reflex jealousy and tried to concentrate on the important things.

  “There’s an outcome from that refusal which is going to fall on you,” she went on. “Best I can offer to soften the blow is to help you with your other tasks, like getting the colonel here safely.”

  “Huh?”

  “Me. Tom.” Bian made an exaggerated mime. “We. Help. You. Better than standing around here like a spare part.”

  The whine of Bian’s secret entrance startled us. It spun around and David stepped unsteadily off the platform.

  “How the hell did you work that out?” Bian asked.

  “I was watching you. Monkey see, monkey do. Amber, call from Matt. Everything’s ready back at Manassah. I think it’s time to go.”

  “It is.”

  Bian retrieved a slim intercom from her bra. “Tom. Meet me topside in ten, please. Full combat kit and bring mine.”

  “I’m in too?” David asked me.

  I nodded. Julie, Pia and Victor’s guards should be enough for Jen. I’d need Alex as well, and I was hoping that meant Ricky too.

  Bian ushered us into the corridor. “There’s an elevator at the end,” she said. “I’m looking forward to this. I get to see what your little accountant is made of.” She grabbed David’s butt.

  “I’m actually not an accountant at all, I’m an actuary,” David said, unfazed. “Despite the fact I work in financials, there are fundamental differences between what I do and what an accountant does. It’s all to do with risks and uncertainties. It’s really fascinating. See…”

  Bian gave me a beseeching glance over her shoulder.

  I shrugged. “You made the bed, you lie in it,” I mouthed at her. Not that there was any real chance of that, given how smitten David was with Pia.

  Chapter 28

  My ear hissed with the noise of too many connections lashed together in a hurry.

  The colonel’s mil-spec TacNet was like a huge spiderweb, stretched over the high plains, fastening to the Nagas’ comms system on one side and Victor’s on the other. It even seamlessly relayed cell calls, all slipping down the ether to me, kneeling motionless on a blacktop in the middle of nowhere.

  It was dark in a way that cities don’t get: unrelieved blackness in every direction except for the diamond scatter of cold stars across the sky.

  I was hot. That was good. It meant the blankets swathing me were keeping my heat signature locked in. Bian had checked on her infrared scope. Outside the duct-taped blankets, I was close to the temperature of the blacktop and invisible to infrared eyes.

  I was looking east into the darkness where Colorado 52 ran, arrow-straight, and waiting for the call to slither its way through the static in my ear.

  Alex’s voice startled me. “Contact! Fifteen. First mark in ten.” He was calling on his cell, fifteen miles east of me. Time to rock and roll.

  “Affirm in ten.” That was the colonel.

  It went quiet, then Alex came back. “Five, four, three, two, one. Mark.”

  “Rolling. Five seconds to the blacktop.” I heard the colonel’s car engine racing. He’d be shooting out of the old barn, down the dirt track. He’d make the blacktop just around…

  “Bravo, this is Eagle,” said a voice I now recognized as the helicopter pilot. “I have a contact westbound on Colorado 52. Twenty miles west of us.”

  “Not one of ours, Eagle. Check it out.” That was a Naga, in their command center, somewhere out on the interstates.

  “Right overhead!” That was Alex again. I heard a brief rumble like thunder, then he spoke again, his voice subdued. “Apache.”

  Oh, joy.

  It had to be the frigging Apache, not the Chinese Z10.

  Fifteen miles west of me. A little over five minutes. Five miles east of me, the colonel trailed his coat and the Apache came flying down the road to see who it was. They’d pass right over me.

  “Eagle. Second vehicle joined westbound on 52, eight miles. Motorcycle. Designated Oscar 3.”

  Bian. My pickup. Dismissed. Not their target.

  But still logged in their fire control system.

  It was an eerie, creepy feeling. They could probably read her license plate.

  I had a moment to wonder about the wisdom of this. I was putting myself directly under the flight line of the most capable attack helicopter in the world. The beast thundering towards me had the weaponry to turn this road into a river of fire, to gouge out a grave the length of a freight train and leave nothing of me to fill it.

  I had the equivalent of a strong flashlight.

  Well, you always did like to see your ideas put into action.

  Thanks, Tara. This was one I wanted to leave in the workshop.

  “Passing overhead!” Bian’s voice.

  Any second now.

  I had one eye on the nightscope, the other wide open and searching for the first hint in the darkness of the onrushing helicopter. The split view made my eyes ache, but I wasn’t going to do what they were doing—rely on what one piece of tech was telling them.

  “This is Eagle, Tango! Repeat Tango, westbound at twelve.” They’d identified the colonel’s car, and they were less than seven miles from me.

  “All units respond, grid 5-18, Tango westbound on Colorado 52.”

  I tuned it out as pursuit vehicles called out positions on the Nagas’ TacNet. As long as there was nothing in the immediate vicinity, we’d be fine; but we couldn’t be sure of that. I didn’t know how big they’d set their grid pattern, how much space there was in grid 5-18. Maybe the colonel would.

  I could see Bian’s he
adlight in the distance.

  I pressed the ‘charge’ button. I imagined I could hear the whine of capacitors as the satellite comms system juiced up alongside my head. Then it was blotted out by the distant thudding of the Apache.

  A low star above Colorado 52 blinked, reappeared. Another.

  Half seen, half imagined, the sinister shape started to emerge, the infrared making it look like the air was boiling around it, and it was suddenly hurtling towards me at forty feet and over a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  It was terrifying.

  Don’t see me! Don’t see me!

  The grotesque growths on the front of the Apache took shape in my scope-enhanced eye. Front and center, the topmost cluster was the PNVS, the Lockheed Martin Pilot’s Night Vision System. Left and below, the gunner’s IR cluster. Right of that, the range finder and low light cluster.

  Two shots, maybe. The chance for three would be like winning the lottery.

  Half a mile.

  All the breath went out of me. My eyes stopped fighting each other and a ghostly composite image formed of the menacing insect-headed aircraft. The blades were invisible. It was slightly nose down, as if it was looking directly at me. My mouth was dry.

  Now.

  I thumbed the nightscope’s laser pointer. I had half a second before their countermeasures suite lit up with a threat warning. Time seemed to stretch. I leaned on the rig, pivoted it on the photographer’s tripod.

  Hurry, hurry.

  Gently stroked the pointer onto the PNVS cluster, looking right into its malevolent, mechanical eye. Squeezed Matt’s lashed-up trigger.

  Silence. No bangs, no flashes.

  Had it even—

  “Shit! Shit! Shit! Vision system failure!” screamed the TacNet. Score one for me. Pilot completely freaked.

  The Apache leaped upward as the pilot became almost completely blind and instantaneously allergic to flying close to the ground.

  I followed it up. Gunner’s cluster, dead center.

  Slowly. Slowly. Last chance.

  Squeezed the trigger again.

  “NVS down! IR gone. What the fuck?” Gunner freaked too. Ha!

  “Bravo, this is Eagle. Systems down! Complete IR system malfunction.”