She was most definitely naked.
Renton took a deep breath, and let a little of his anger seep into his demeanor. This was the trickiest part of the gambit he had prepared – he needed to appear scandalized, both at the indignity offered to his mistress and the personal slight aimed at him, without showing the depth of his outrage.
“You dare?” His lip quivered as he hesitated, watching the smile spread across Lóa Thule’s increasingly despicable face. “It is as I had heard. The Thule Cartel is not made up of people, but animals, degenerates. Your behavior sickens me.”
Lóa Thule tried to laugh it off, but he could tell that she was thrown by his reaction. He was meant to be worried for Anastasia’s life, not her dignity.
“And here I thought you would appreciate that,” she simpered, studying him minutely. “It was done entirely for your benefit, I assure you.”
“I doubt that very much,” Renton said, setting the paper casually aside, as if it held no particular meaning. “Let’s make this brief, as I find your presence offensive. What, besides confirming the rumors of your cartel’s perversity, have you come to share with me?”
Lóa Thule hesitated for a moment, relying on a cigarette to buy her time while she tried to gauge the situation. Her falter was brief, but the extensive training in social niceties and diplomatic ugliness that Anastasia had forced on him made her uncertainty obvious.
“Surely, you wish to negotiate the release of your mistress? I have come to state terms. My understanding was that Miss Martynova’s authority was vested in you in her absence...”
“Then allow me to disabuse you of your mistaken notions,” Renton snapped, slamming his hand down on the desk and rising partway from his chair. “No one – and I do mean no one – in the Black Sun Cartel would debase themselves by dealing with you wretches. You are correct, inasmuch as I act as Anastasia Martynova’s surrogate. Allow me the satisfaction of informing you that there will be no deal. Your terms are meaningless. If you do indeed hold Miss Martynova captive,” he snarled, picking up the paper and waving it at the Thule woman, “which, I might add, this filth does nothing to persuade me of – then you, and your cartel, are doomed. The Black Sun will come for you, and we will be merciless in our pursuit. We will not negotiate, offer quarter, or succumb to blackmail. I would suggest that you rectify this situation immediately, and then wholeheartedly apologize to Miss Martynova for this outrage. She may be so kind as to grant you a painless death. If I must act in her stead, then I assure you I will offer you no such mercy.”
When she ground out her cigarette on the wood of his desk, marring the gleaming finish of the polished oak, Lóa Thule’s hand shook – whether from shock or anger, Renton couldn’t say. He simply took what little satisfaction was left to take from it.
“If that is your position, then I have clearly wasted my time here,” Lóa Thule responded, speaking so rapidly that she was difficult to understand. She stood and took her coat from the tree. “I cannot help but suspect that your feelings on the matter might not be as universal as you claim. Perhaps a direct approach to Josef Martynova would prove to be more fruitful and less tiresome...”
“Contact whomever you like,” Renton said curtly, sinking back into his chair. “You will receive the same answer – or perhaps an even less charitable response.”
“Your reaction puzzles me,” Lóa Thule admitted, pulling her coat over thin shoulders. “You know that your mistress is at our mercy, and yet you show so little regard for her well-being. Rumors of your affection for her are widespread – but so are the rumors of her distaste for you. Perhaps the latter are true? Perhaps you would see the Martynova daughter eliminated to clear the way for your own ambition, or in revenge for her public spurning and rebuke?”
Renton was familiar with the rumors. He and Ana had spent months manufacturing them, after all. But the implication stung nonetheless.
“You embarrass yourself further, spouting such nonsense,” Renton said, shaking his head as if he pitied her. “Understand this, if you are capable of understanding – I act in Anastasia Martynova’s stead. I am nothing more than an instrument of her will, in this as in all things. And she is, before anything, the Mistress of the Black Sun. She would never allow you leverage to harm the interests of her cartel, whether by threat to her person or otherwise. Whatever advantage you feel you have gained is a product of your own delusions of grandeur, of the madness that afflicts your poor excuse for a cartel.”
“Enough. I will take my leave. I promise you this, Renton Hall – you will live to regret each of these words – you and your mistress both.” Lóa Thule smiled, and for a moment, he could clearly see the derangement that was rumored to afflict every member of the Thule Cartel. “You will wish that you had taken the chance to bargain when it was offered. I will see to that personally.”
Renton laughed, the most fraudulent in a lifetime of false laughter.
“Thank you for the warning. Allow me to give you one of my own, as a parting gift. Any indignity you visit upon my mistress, any harm that should befall her by your hands, or by the hands of your cartel, will be revisited on your person, a hundred times over.” He paused and looked her straight in her eyes, frightfully unhinged though they were. “I will see to that personally.”
Lóa Thule slammed the door behind her, leaving him alone with his anxieties. Renton crumpled the piece of paper and shoved it in his pocket, unwilling to look at it or part with it.
He had already assembled everything he would need in a small bag that rested beneath his desk. His hand moved to the butt of his gun by reflex.
Renton made himself count to thirty before he slipped out of his office and into the hall, hurrying after Lóa Thule.
Eleven.
“Stop pacing.”
“I’m not. Okay – maybe I am. But I’m nervous.”
“What do you have to be nervous about? You see her all the time. You just saw her like three days ago.”
“I know. But this is the first time I’ve seen her here.”
“So what? We’ve only been here for a few weeks. It’s not like you’ve done anything special or bad that you need to be worried about. Shit, you hardly do anything at all. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
He started pacing again.
“I don’t know. It’s just…I guess maybe I want to, like, impress her? Or something? It’s weird. The Program has always been totally separate from the rest of my life. It’s not like what we do is a secret or anything…”
“It is, actually. It’s literally a state secret. Pretty much everything to do with Audits is classified. You signed a confidentiality agreement and everything.”
“I did?”
“You are such an idiot. Do you just sign things without reading them?”
“Sometimes?”
“Real smart. You do realize that you not only agreed to keep Audits affairs secret on pain of death, but you waived your right to a trial, assuming they were to charge you with espionage, right?”
“Um…”
“I’m sure Miss Aoki explained it to you,” Katya said, rolling her eyes while she toweled off her arms and shoulders. “And stop pacing. If you’re going to do that stuff, get out of the gym already. You do have your own room, you know.”
Alex sat down against the wall.
“Sorry. I’m just nervous.”
“You said that already.” Katya sighed as she climbed off the stationary bike. She picked up her water bottle from the mat beside her feet and regarded him critically while she drank. “Alright. You obviously aren’t going anywhere. Spill it. What’s eating you?”
Alex glanced over at Katya, who wore an Academy gym shirt and track pants, same as him, along with a headband to keep her hair out of her face, and tried to figure out what exactly had kept him from sleeping well the night before – outside of the nightmares, which had been getting progressively worse.
Actually, calling them nightmares wasn’t truly accurate. It wasn’t as if he w
ere being chased or dreaming of his teeth falling out. The dreams were more like fragments of someone else’s memory, accompanied by feelings of severe dislocation and anxiety. He would dream of something as mundane as having dinner in a house he didn’t recognize, or riding in the back seat of an unfamiliar car, always surrounded by people who were maddeningly familiar, but that he could not place, and then wake to a terrible headache and his heart pounding in his chest as if it sought to break free of his rib cage. Last night he had dreamed of taking a walk around the muddy banks of small lake, the ground littered with ragged white feathers left behind by molting geese, holding his mother’s hand. When he looked at her, however, he didn’t recognize the woman’s face.
This was all made even more complicated by his inability to remember what his mother looked like when he was awake. Just thinking about it made his head spin and his heart race.
“I’m not sure that Eerie would like the person that I am, here,” Alex said, struggling to find appropriate words. “I know she wouldn’t like what we do.”
“You mean killing people. You’re still hung up on those guards in China, right?”
“Ah. Yeah. I suppose so.”
“You need to get over that shit,” Katya said, sitting down beside him. “This isn’t an existence that you can be halfhearted about. You can’t harbor reservations about doing whatever you need to survive, or you won’t. Keep beating yourself up, and you’ll be giving someone else the opportunity to do the same.”
“I hear you, but none of that makes me feel better about it.”
“Look at it this way,” Katya said, pausing to drink water. “What do you think Eerie would prefer – you holding to some sort of arbitrary morality, or you coming back alive?”
Alex shook his head while Katya wandered over to the weight bench.
“That’s pretty stark.”
“Quit moping and make yourself useful,” she said, changing the weights on the bar. “Come and spot me.”
Alex changed the weights on the bar, then stood at the head of the bench and helped Katya lift the bar free. She gritted her teeth and banged out ten reps, then he helped her replace the bar in the catch.
“The first time I killed someone, I spent the next three days throwing up,” Katya admitted quietly, staring up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes, as if she were reliving the memory. “I saw his face every time I closed my eyes. I dreamed about it – not every night, but often enough that I didn’t get enough sleep for the next few weeks. I had to do it, of course – they set you up with an easy target before you are admitted to assassin’s training, to prove that you are capable of killing. The actual hit was nothing challenging, and I had two instructors shadowing me in case something did go wrong. The only hard part was the murder.”
She paused, lost in the memory, and Alex wondered if he was supposed to say something.
“I hadn’t thought of the sewing needles yet, so I ported a razor blade instead, which was silly – it hardly matters if an object has a sharp edge when it’s lodged in the tissue of the heart. It was pretty ugly, not quick at all, but I stayed until it was over, to be sure. And I thought I was fine with it. It’s not like I’m religious or anything, and I was raised in the Black Sun, so I always knew that violence would be part of my life. Becoming an assassin was Anastasia’s idea, but I was all for it. I wanted to be useful to her.” She smiled briefly, but the cause was a mystery to Alex. “It wasn’t until the next day, right in the middle of breakfast, that it hit me. What I had done. I’m not sure how to describe it. I felt…cold. Sick. I barely made it to the bathroom.”
Katya motioned to him, and he helped her do another set.
“I thought I would never forget his face, but that wasn’t true. After a year or so, it became indistinct. These days, I can’t remember it at all. I don’t even know the last time I thought about it.” Alex felt a twinge of guilt at making Katya bring it up. He remembered their conversation on the rooftop, outside of his dorm room at the Academy, and wondered why he felt so comfortable leaning on this girl. It didn’t make sense, that the person he put his trust in was not only a trained killer, but a devoted servant of Central’s arch-schemer, Anastasia Martynova. “Long way around, I suppose I’m trying to tell you that you’ll get it over it. The guilt doesn’t last. Eventually, you’ll start to understand that it’s really as simple as this – either they die, or you do. If some Anathema killed you, you wouldn’t rest any easier knowing that they felt bad about it. So stop pretending that you are extending the dead a courtesy by regretting your actions. You aren’t doing them any favors. It’s narcissistic, and frankly, not very attractive.”
Alex laughed despite himself.
“Thanks. I think.”
“No problem.” Katya winked at him from the weight bench. “Everybody likes confidence, Alex – Eerie included. Act with conviction, or if you can’t, fake it. It’ll turn into the real thing in time.”
“You know, sometimes you sound like a wise older sister, or something…”
“You want me to kick your ass?”
***
Gaul frowned at the roster, while Alice doodled on her own copy.
“I’m not sure I understand the choices that you have made.”
“Oh?” Alice looked up from her squiggly lines and retraced circles to grin at him. “Then, by all means, please do tell me how to do my job.”
“I am not second-guessing your decisions. I am simply unclear on the rationale for some of them.”
Alice chewed on the end of her pen and waited.
“For example,” Gaul continued on, pushing his glasses up with one finger, “given the limited number of personnel that can be designated as active-duty Auditors, why would you want a second apport technician?”
“It’s part of my overall concept,” Alice explained, leaning her chair back so it balanced only on the rear legs. “When Alistair ran the Auditors, we did everything in pairs, or as an overall unit, right?”
“As has been the standard practice.”
“Whatever. I want a bit more flexibility,” Alice explained. “I want to be able to divide my people into two squads for specialized situations. It will contribute to their shared strengths. I can’t be the only apport technician – I’m good, but I can’t be two places at once. So, I need Chike. Besides, he’s a fully qualified demo expert, and a damn good marksman. He’s got stronger combat fundamentals than most of the rest. It’ll work.”
“Leaving that aside for the moment,” Gaul said stiffly, transferring his attention to another file that was open on his crowded desktop, “would you explain why you want to make Haley Weathers an Auditor-in-Training? When I transferred her to the Program, it was with the intent of her serving in a supporting capacity.”
“Yeah, I figured. That is the way it has traditionally been done. We’ll still have her work remotely, maybe even with that dog trick the Far Shores came up with.” Alice’s grin widened a notch. “But Haley’s Astral Protocol is damn useful, and she’s only getting better at possession. She can hack it in the field, believe me.”
Gaul gave her inquisitive look.
“She can possess targets while projecting herself remotely now?”
“Yes. Seems like your theory about associating with Alex Warner increasing the effectiveness of protocols was on the money. Haley is way more impressive than she was a few months ago.”
The Director made a series of notations on the open folder, then shuffled his paperwork.
“Moving on, I was surprised by your decision to cut Neal Blum from the Program. I understand that his combat proficiencies are low, and his performance was uneven, but it seems to me that the Audits department is critically short of telepaths.”
Alice nodded.
“It’s true. But Blum wasn’t ever going to qualify for field operations, and he was too unreliable for me to put any trust in his performance. I’m not losing a field team because their telepath made a mistake. Haley can provide a telepathic link in the field
, and Mitsuru can download the protocol for that, too, if necessary. Anyway, I’ve got a full-time solution in the works – you won’t like it much, though.”
Gaul’s gaze sharpened.
“Please elaborate, Chief Auditor.”
“I want to rescind Karim Sabir’s Order of Exile,” Alice said, folding her hands behind her head. “And I want to admit him to Audits.”
Gaul’s pen stopped its perpetual motion.
“You cannot be serious.”
“Bet I can.”
“Karim Sabir very nearly provoked open warfare between the Hegemony and the Black Sun,” Gaul exclaimed angrily. “He was personally responsible for six deaths.”
“Which speaks to his talents, I think.”
“He destabilized Central for profit!”
“Well, he was a contractor,” Alice pointed out. “That was his job.”
“I will not allow it,” Gaul said forcefully. “The man is a menace.”
“Which is exactly why I need him. Anyone who chooses to spend their exile in Iraq, through two American invasions and a low-grade civil war, has got to be hard as nails. It’s like you said, Gaul – I need a telepath. He’s one of the few F-Class telepaths floating around who isn’t already affiliated with a cartel.”
“Absolutely not,” Gaul said, crossing his arms. “I will not allow it.”
“Oh, come off it,” Alice scolded. “You rescinded the Thule Cartel’s Order of Exile, and they caused way more chaos than Karim.”
“I can control the Thule Cartel. And I do not need to justify my actions to you.”
“Hate to be a contrarian, boss, but you do. Remember that general Audit of Central that I’m conducting? You’re on the list.”
Gaul was momentarily unnerved, though he masked it well enough that he was fairly certain Alice Gallow didn’t notice.
“That is an entirely different affair.”
“If you say so. Believe me, there are going to be questions about the Thule Cartel headed your way, like it or not.”
The Far Shores (The Central Series) Page 29