by Mark Henwick
“Granted, of course,” I said. “For both of them, though their say is final.”
Jen certainly wouldn’t turn down the challenge, and as I’d said, Alex was doing it because it was the right thing to do.
“Thank you, Amber,” Skylur said formally. “We’ll use recesses in the nomicane to discuss other issues today about your House.”
Right on cue, his security team leader knocked on the window and pointed to her watch.
Jen was waiting for us in the living room, flanked by Julie and Keith.
“Of course, Jennifer.” Skylur gestured her to accompany him. “My driver will return you here afterwards and the journey should give us enough time for the top item on my list and a couple from yours.”
I saw them to the door, and returned to a strange quiet that had settled over the house, contrasting with the whirl of thoughts in my head.
“There’s breakfast in the kitchen,” Yelena said. “Alex had to go out on patrol. We’re still early for the hearing, so I’m going to work out for half an hour.”
It was an invitation, but I shook my head. Too much going on that I needed to think about. It felt as if I’d been sleepwalking and Skylur’s visit had startled me into full consciousness.
Syndesmon. An actual title and a job description. Status. Responsibility.
And an end to my therapy.
How ready am I for that?
Yelena left. I sat on the sofa and looked at my laptop on the coffee table in front of me. Its silver casing seemed to pull at my eyes.
How ready am I?
I knew I was supposed to progress one step at a time. The new job and the proceedings with Ibarre would be more than enough to deal with today.
I should have breakfast. Shower. Get dressed.
The hell with that!
I flipped the laptop screen and woke it up. Opened the browser.
My heart rate edged up. I wiped my hands on my jeans.
How ready am I?
Fingers feeling clumsy, I typed tanner forsythe into the search box.
The screen filled. Dozens of links. Hundreds.
A row of images at the top. Seeing his face was like being kicked in the belly. He hadn’t changed much—the blue eyes, the light brown hair, the tan set off by the pale shirts. Did his face look harder, or was that my imagination?
My lungs were heaving and my heart started racing.
Lights. Shouting.
Fuck, yeah!
Grunting, sweaty…
Without really meaning to I clicked on the link to the images.
Stupid! Stupid! I need information.
A screen full of more images. And it gradually sank in that lots of them were the same type of settings. This was the information I’d been looking for. In the images.
Publicity shots. Studios. Red carpets. Talk shows. Someone holding a door open as he walked in, sunglasses covering his eyes, smirking.
And girls. Models and starlets, hanging on his arms, dancing with him in clubs.
Click on one. Down to the page it came from.
‘LA producer Tanner Forsythe creates another hit reality show…’
I blinked as the implications sank in.
Enough.
I closed the browser and concentrated on calming myself down.
Forsythe was living and working in Los Angeles.
Yes, I’d been sleepwalking. Tanner had been someone I knew I had to do something about sometime. He’d be in Washington or New York or Miami. I’d be busy. I’d need to think about what I wanted to do.
No. He was right here. He might be no more than a couple of miles away from where I was. Right now.
Chapter 9
The doors sighed shut and the sense of anticipation, already high, notched up another level.
“We are now in session,” a suit at the front said to the crowded room. A room crammed with Athanate, so full they were standing in the back.
Those that could, took their seats.
I was sitting front and center, going over everything Skylur and I had talked about, worrying about what Ibarre might have up his sleeve, and trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach.
On my left, Yelena was there, as support.
On my right was Elizabetta, as Skylur had promised.
She was trying to distract me with the pretense of feeding me information about the proceedings and getting me up to date on the negotiations for the new Assembly.
I appreciated it, but it wasn’t working.
The problem wasn’t Forsythe. I’d managed to pack that away again—for now.
It wasn’t Correia either, who was sitting in the back with a group of her advisers and a wall of security. I’d expected the antagonism I felt from her and Basilikos.
Except I wasn’t allowed to call them Basilikos anymore. Correia had changed the name of her party to distance herself from the Matlal faction who’d attempted to attack the Assembly, declared war on Panethus and claimed Los Angeles belonged to them. That faction was still called Basilikos, but Correia had adopted the name of the Hidden Path for her party.
It was an inspired choice. It appealed to traditionalists, and even progressive Houses felt uncomfortable thinking they stood against the Hidden Path.
But it wasn’t Forsythe or Correia that were making me jumpy now. It was the almost physical pressure of everyone’s eyes on me.
It had always been too much to expect that my first appearance after the Carson Park battle in New Mexico would be easy. Rumors of the ritual had gotten out. The Were would obviously focus on that, and I guessed so would the Adepts. I had all that discussion and speculation to look forward to when I was back in full circulation.
Meanwhile, I was in front of the Athanate and many of them were speculating about the length of time I’d been out of sight since the battle, and the amount of time Diana had been spending with me instead of here. Diana was one of the oldest, most respected Athanate in the world. She was needed here.
I still had a very basic grasp of the Athanate language, but I could make out that a group of Panethus to my left were discussing Basilikos. Correia’s claims that the Hidden Path party were trying to get the Basilikos renegades to abandon violence and return to the discussion table were dismissed. Most Panethus suspected the Hidden Path party and Basilikos were two heads of the same body, and Correia was simply their representation in the new Assembly.
They also thought the longer the conference went on, the more likely a Basilikos cell would get through and kill someone. They weren’t happy that the conference was being delayed by this hearing. They weren’t happy Diana wasn’t here.
And somehow all that was my fault.
Screw them. Diana was only in LA at all—and free to help either me or the new Assembly—because I’d refused to stay away from New Mexico, or to assume like everyone else that no Athanate would dare to harm her. Amaral had dared. And Diana’s absence had as much to do with her recovery from the harm done to her as it did with my therapy. Not my fault.
I shook it off and tried to concentrate on the surroundings and Elizabetta’s briefing.
To house the meetings, Skylur had bought one of the older convention centers in Los Angeles. It had been too close to the massive Los Angeles Convention Center in Downtown to prosper, and I heard from Jen that he’d gotten it for a good price. The remains of the last paying event that took place were all over—huge posters and empty skeleton stands for an RV exhibition. Skylur had them left up as a disguise. They gave the place an eerie feel.
Elizabetta’s summary of progress toward the new Assembly was succinct and useful.
After all the struggle since the breakup of the last Assembly, Panethus and the Hidden Path were still closely balanced. In addition to waverers on their own sides, both Skylur and Correia were courting the Houses of the Midnight Empire, the shrinking Athanate group that had originally comprised most of the territories of the old British Empire.
Panethus was better placed at the moment, but unl
ess the Midnight Empire declared one way or the other, and brought all their Houses with them, neither Panethus nor the Hidden Path could be sure of an outright majority in the new Assembly.
As for those Athanate groups missing: the Empire of Heaven, the huge association comprising China and most of the Far East, and the Carpathians, the oldest of all the groups—neither had indicated they would attend. Or honor the laws of the new Assembly. How would they react to a decision on Emergence?
From another Athanate conversation behind us, I could hear murmurs that maybe Diana would have been able to get the missing groups to attend.
I snorted quietly to myself; for once I knew things they didn’t. The Empire of Heaven might be closer than they suspected, and the Carpathians were here, in the sense that both Yelena and I qualified by Blood. Of course, that didn’t matter as far as getting the Domain of Carpathia to cooperate with the rest of the world on Emergence.
And what does that Carpathian Blood truly mean for me?
More for me to explore when the current crisis was over.
Bian came in late and made a welcome interruption.
She insisted on a formal greeting, neck kisses and hugs for the three of us that everyone could see. And for me, I got her teeth playfully nipping at my earlobe.
“Stick it to ’em, Round-eye,” she murmured before slinking off to find the seat that the main Altau group had kept for her. She snarled at every Hidden Path member sitting nearby, and one or two unconsciously shrank back.
I’d despaired of Bian ever actually telling me her age, but working on clues from Pia, Yelena and I guessed it was more than a century but less than one-fifty. Most of the Masters or Mistresses of the Hidden Path Houses were far older that. All of which made them theoretically stronger than Bian, but her reputation was chilling, even in a conference covered by Altau’s oath of peace.
She found her seat and the idle chatter ceased as Skylur entered.
Attention gathered and focused. Despite all the comments about delaying the business of the conference, there was an almost subconscious pull and excitement about this nomicane.
The full conference was about formulas for representation, numbers, procedures and a slew of similarly worthy topics.
But today…for the Athanate here, today’s business was about oaths. And Blood. And betrayal. About new laws, that had only ever been drafted on computer, and old laws, so old they’d first been carved on stone.
The heart of the Athanate community was beating in this room.
I shivered.
Chapter 10
Skylur strode onto the podium, where a table and chairs waited. He took the center seat. He was flanked by three other Houses. I recognized one as Eugenie, Herzogin von Urach-Passau, House Passau, the foremost House of Europe. Another I remembered from the last Assembly: House Stanbrigge, the representative from the Midnight Empire. The last I didn’t recognize, and I assumed she was Hidden Path.
Skylur looked out into the dim room until his eyes found mine and paused for a second.
A slight nod.
An Athanate over on the far left stood.
Old Athanate.
Some older Athanate actually looked old—let their hair go gray or their face wrinkled. Skylur didn’t, and neither did the Athanate who confronted him.
“Juanuarte Ibarre, House Ibarre,” Elizabetta murmured.
No shit.
The face was bleak, the brow heavy.
I’d learned he’d come to Maine with the Basque fishing fleets in 1657, master and owner of the whaler Catalin. He’d stayed, establishing a domain that was centered in Portland. He had a reputation for being an eccentric; when the whaling industry ended, he’d incorporated his whole ship as the front hall to his house. Others said all older Athanate liked the feel of their origin and history about them.
Just in standing, Ibarre made me think of the sea. He was a giant of a man, and he rose like a wooden ship’s prow cresting a storm wave. He wore a long charcoal-gray woolen jacket, almost a cloak, stretched across his broad shoulders. His sleek black hair was braided, bound with a scarlet ribbon. It reached down his back like an ornate scabbard.
He glanced around the room. His eyes were rain-cloud gray and cold as the Arctic sea.
“House Ibarre,” Skylur said.
“Ykos Altau.” House Altau in Athanate. Ibarre’s voice was as cold as his eyes. I had no chance of following this nomicane if they spoke Athanate.
“You’re well aware that we delayed proceedings to include the presence of a witness who doesn’t speak Athanate, House Ibarre,” Skylur said, relaxing back in his seat. “I suggest we proceed in English.”
“House Farrell, of course,” Ibarre said. “A so-called Athanate barely through crusis, ignorant of our language and ways. Let us by all means accommodate the witness.” His ice-cold gaze picked me out of the crowd, and I shivered.
Skylur just smiled.
Ibarre was Panethus, I reminded myself. Somewhere, he had kin, and they loved him. I needed, for my own sake, to see the whole man, not just the opponent in this nomicane. I needed it because I might say or do something today that would condemn him, and I would have to live with the result: a tragedy to his kin and House, balanced against a tragedy for the rest of the world if Emergence were not controlled.
Of course, he might say or do something that would condemn me instead.
A second Athanate stood up. Ibarre showed no surprise, but immediately sat back down, yielding to her.
They planned that.
Another shiver of worry.
What was this?
In a nomicane, Skylur was simply a convener. He was obliged to ensure all sides of a question were examined. It seemed like the Eastern Seaboard association were going to use that to their full advantage.
“House Prowser,” Skylur said.
Unlike Ibarre and Skylur, Amelie Prowser was one of those Athanate who cultivated a look of age. Her hair was gray, drawn away from her face, and her cheeks had the look of an outdoor woman—a farmer’s wife, maybe. Her clothes were dark and plain.
I knew she was even older than Ibarre. Still not as old as Skylur, but possibly earlier to the US than him. Her territory, if she held onto it after this, was the state of Michigan—she was the only member of the Eastern Seaboard association who didn’t actually have a domain on the Atlantic.
I knew that Ibarre had agreed to betray Skylur; I’d heard Amaral’s phone call with him. I wasn’t sure about Prowser. I’d heard Amaral call her, but I hadn’t heard what happened.
Maybe I was about to find out: the handover from Ibarre to Prowser had so obviously been pre-agreed.
Did that mean she was on his side?
“I have spoken with House Ibarre regarding these proceedings,” she said. “I share some of his concerns, and I have therefore agreed to speak on behalf of all of the unaligned Houses of the Eastern Seaboard.”
Her voice carried age and wisdom, a style of speaking and an accent of old Britain, a weight of history behind it. They had chosen her well.
On the podium, Eugenie whispered something in Skylur’s ear.
He shrugged. “I dispute your use of the word unaligned. However, continue,” he said to Prowser.
Her head dipped fractionally to him. I was too far away to gauge how that acknowledgement was intended.
She stood straight and spoke clearly. “We concede openly that some among us agreed with proposals made by House Amaral.”
There was a collective drawing of breath throughout the room. She was taking a huge risk; if Skylur made his argument that Assembly law had not been in force at the time of the Convocation, then she had just consigned her associates to a death sentence. Ibarre had to be pretty sure they could successfully argue that Assembly laws had still been in force. Or, he didn’t think it would matter. He had a different plan.
My feeling of unease grew as Prowser continued to speak.
“We were unaware at the time that House Amaral had betrayed and murder
ed his own Master, House Romero. We were similarly unaware of the heinous capture and torture of Diana Ionache. Those actions we utterly condemn. Nevertheless, not knowing of those matters, some among us would have joined him in calling a Convocation, under Assembly rules, with the express intention of deposing you as leader of Panethus.”
Prowser walked out into the space between the ranked rows of seats and the podium.
“We say this so there will be no need for further time-wasting investigations on the point of who did and didn’t agree to call a Convocation.”
“Some among us is a little vague,” Skylur said.
Her head dipped again.
“That’s why we are seated as we are,” she said. She indicated Ibarre and made a sweep with her arm. “House Ibarre and the Houses seated to his left supported a Convocation.” Including Ibarre, there were five Athanate seated in that space. She turned and indicated her empty seat. “I, and the remaining Houses, did not.”
The auditorium sat in stunned silence. Under Hidden Path law in the Agiagraphos, that was at least five death sentences, and not necessarily only for the head of each House. The audience had packed in here to see the show, but none of them had expected this abrupt acceleration.
“As you say, House Prowser, you’ve neatly concluded the first steps of our proceedings,” Eugenie said. “If you planned to concede this point all along, I would like to ask why you allowed the proceedings to be delayed to accommodate the availability of a witness whom you knew would not be needed.”
If the rest of the room had been stunned, Eugenie certainly hadn’t. And she was right; why wait until I showed up?
The answer had to be because Ibarre’s attack would involve me.
Prowser turned to face the podium, clasping her hands in front of her, frowning.
“A change of plan, House Passau.”
Eugenie raised an eyebrow.
Prowser continued regardless.
“I agreed to represent the association specifically to remove the element of time wasting,” she went on. “What this proceeding needs to focus on is not just the case in point, but the underlying assumptions behind legal systems which the new Assembly will need to take forward.”