“I recognize this part of the road,” Svetlana said, in her clipped, Russian-accented English. “It is not much longer, now.”
“You know, you never say anything when I’m around,” Alex observed, discarding one bad card and getting another to replace it. “I started to worry that you hated me.”
“No,” Svetlana said, shaking her head. “But I am a servant, not a member of the family, not a favored guest like yourself. It is not my place to speak, so I don’t.”
“Wow, that’s a really fucked up attitude you have,” Alex said, tossing his cards down in disgust. “Does Anastasia own you or something?”
Svetlana gave him a wan smile and returned to her book. Timor put the cards aside and turned to chat with Emily, leaving Alex to stew impotently. Anastasia’s eyes snapped open a few minutes later without a trace of sleepiness in them.
“Mr. Bao,” she said softly, staring at indeterminate point above Alex’s head. “It’s good to hear from you again.”
Then Anastasia switched to what he assumed to be Vietnamese, which impressed the hell out of Alex, but didn’t seem to come as a surprise to anyone else.
Alex stared glumly out the window and wondered if the whole trip would be that way.
* * *
Gaul sighed and let Alistair knock twice before he finally called for him to come in.
“Sorry boss, I know you’re busy. But I just got my marching orders…”
“Yes,” Gaul snapped irritably. “Get to the point, Alistair. There is a problem of some kind? Something that you don’t understand?”
“No, I get the mission,” Alistair said, unflappable, as he took a seat in front of Gaul. “You’ve had me working on this for months, whatever it is, so it must be important. ’I'll do it, I’m not arguing. I’m simply wondering when I will get my old job back.”
“What does that mean?” Gaul asked. “I’m not in the mood for games, Alistair. Say what you have to say.”
“For quite a while, you’ve had me running errands while you do my job. In case you have forgotten, I am supposed to be your Chief Auditor. Instead, I barely even see my subordinates,” Alistair complained. “They take their marching orders from you. Hell, you and Alice Gallow seem tight these days. What gives? Did I blow it?”
“On the contrary,” Gaul said, pushing his glasses back into place. “I have no one else that I can trust with this matter, no one else who is capable. I am not demoting you, Alistair, I am relying on you.”
“If you say so. I’ve spent months running down rumors about your old classmates, and about our friends out in Egypt, the Anathema. They haven’t tried anything in fifty years, Gaul. They’ve been dormant since they were expelled from Central. No one I’ve talked to knows anything about this ‘Rosicrucian’ person at all, at least, not in the sense that you mean it. You have me talking to conspiracy theorists and French Royalist weirdoes. Is all of this supposed to make sense?”
Gaul looked up at him briefly, and then he solemnly shook his head.
“Not to you, it isn’t. Don’t misunderstand me, Alistair. I put my faith in you because you are capable, but your remit does not extend as far as doubting me,” Gaul said critically. “I have guided the Academy through a dozen crises before this, and I will lead us through this one as well. As Chief Auditor, you are my right hand. My right hand is not permitted to question my intentions or my judgment.”
There was no sound in the room except for Gaul’s pen scratching on the paper.
“You’re the boss,” Alistair said, sighing and standing up. “I wish you’d let me delegate this, though.”
“The most important part of managing people is knowing which jobs you absolutely must do yourself,” Gaul said coldly, motioning toward the door without looking up. “I eagerly await the day that you come to this realization yourself.”
Alistair shook his head doubtfully and left, closing the door behind him. After he left, Gaul put his pen down, rubbed his forehead, and then sighed, looking at the chair where his Chief Auditor had sat.
* * *
Mr. Bao was nothing like the wizened old Vietnamese man that Alex was expecting. He was short, stocky, and middle-aged, with neatly trimmed hair and designer glasses. He spoke unaccented English and was evasive about where he’d picked it up. Since he and Alex both ended up in the front cabin of the ferry, they talked about the Lakers, to whom Mr. Bao was devoted, despite the fact that Alex knew nothing about basketball. He was likable, and the trip to the island and was short and breathtakingly beautiful. The bay sparkled in the afternoon sun, azure blue with grey columns of stone jutting out from the water like the ruins of an ancient city, some crowned with livid green flora, others concealing impossibly perfect white-sand beaches. Mr. Bao pointed out each islet and told him what they were called, but Alex got confused, as they all seemed to have variations on the same name. The island that they were going to was at the end of the harbor, tucked inside the arm of a much larger barrier island. There was a fishing village across the water on the mainland, and a swanky resort on the adjoining island.
They disembarked on an amazingly level beach that was flooded with two inches of warm seawater so clear he could see the grains of sand beneath, extending to the rock walls that surrounded the cove. While a taciturn Samoan dealt with the luggage, they followed Anastasia along narrow path through dense undergrowth and unfamiliar trees. This was followed by lush, formal gardens, dotted with fountains and bisected by a miniature stream. Maintaining it must have required an army of gardeners, but Alex didn’t see anyone on the entire walk.
The house was nestled at the rear of a great clearing, surrounded by cultivated fruit trees and a dazzling array of exotic flowers. It was less grandiose than Alex had feared; two stories painted a uniform white and in a Western style. The house was clearly old, maybe even dating back to the French occupation, with significant modern renovations. They were greeted by a small army of servants, who were a mix of Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian, and then Alex was shown to his room by a tiny smiling man named Phon. He informed him in heavily accented English that dinner would be served in an hour and a half, and then disappeared before Alex had a chance to thank him.
Alex paced across the room, taking stock: one bed, giant and comfortable, too many pillows. One mirror, floor length. A massive armoire into which he had unpacked his meager things. An uncertain looking writing desk that he placed his laptop on with some trepidation. A vase, with perfectly arranged flowers. A window that looked out on the bamboo garden to the rear of the house, and what he assumed was jungle rising up behind it in a verdant green wall.
Alex couldn’t hear anything, despite the fact that he knew the house was filled with people. He was afraid to walk on the lacquered wood of the floors in his shoes, so he stayed carefully on the patterned rugs instead. He sat on the bed for a while, staring out the window. He checked his laptop, confirming that he had internet access, but then he didn’t do anything with it. Restless, he changed into board shorts and his weird Israeli sandals, and then headed for the beach.
The halls of the house seemed deserted, though once he heard people talking somewhere nearby. He was worried that he might have to ask directions, but the first path that he took led directly to a cove, no more than a quarter-mile from the house, fifty meters long and flooded to the extent that only a sliver of white, dry sand remained, at the very edge of the dense rock that bordered the beach. He threw his things down and took off his shirt and sandals, realizing belatedly that he hadn’t thought to bring a towel. As there was nothing for it now, he jumped into the water, which was pleasantly warm, particularly in the shallows of the flooded beach. Gradually, he waded out further, to where the water was deeper and turned a darker shade of blue, and then swam in the freestyle stroke that Michael had taught him. He didn’t go far, instead making lazy circles around the cove, pausing every now and again to float on his back. He stared up at the sky as the sun diminished, licking the salt from his lips and brushing his wet hair back fro
m his eyes. Alex wasn’t the most confident swimmer, having only started a few months ago in the Academy pool, but the bay was calm and he felt safe.
He was tired by the time he made his way back to shore. Alex was relieved to find that his fears had not been realized, and that the tide had in fact receded slightly, leaving his clothes dry and intact. He was less relieved to discover he had company.
“I thought I might find you here,” she said shyly. “Well, maybe not here. Actually, this was the second beach I came to. I brought you a towel.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, suddenly very self-conscious of his shirtless physique. Things had improved, thanks to Michael and the nanites, but he still felt pretty inadequate. “I forgot.”
“I thought you might,” Emily said, obviously pleased with herself. “Are you done swimming? Because I was sent to collect you. Dinner is happening soon. I don’t know why Anastasia has such a problem with her cook. He seems alright to me.”
“Maybe it’s because she doesn’t eat meat,” Alex said grumpily, running the towel through his hair. “Sorry for the trouble, by the way. I didn’t mean to stay out so long. I kind of freaked out once I got here, and I had to get out of that house for a little while.”
“Culture shock,” Emily said sympathetically. “Anastasia’s world will do that to you. I have no idea how rich she is personally, but it must be a substantial fortune,” Emily said, shaking her head and looking, to Alex’s eyes, more than a bit jealous. “Her family is considered the wealthiest and most powerful among all the cartels. She’s lived this way since she was a child. It gives you an idea how she became so comfortable giving orders.”
Alex nodded, and finished pulling his shirt over his head. He ran a hand through his hair, stepped into his sandals, and nodded at Emily. She started back down the path and he followed, drops of saltwater running down the back of his neck and tickling his ears.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you… Are you and Anastasia, like, friends now? Or is that part of some sort of deal you’re working, or what?”
Emily laughed, the sound dying in the brush around them.
“You are so not subtle, Alex. I like that about you,” she said, giggling. “Anastasia and I are for-real friends, at least on my part. We didn’t make any kind of deal. She did me the favor of inviting me and a few other people along on her spring vacation. If things work out the way I hope, then I won’t owe her anything more than a favor. And if they don’t, well, Anastasia wouldn’t be my first option for help.”
“No?” Alex said encouragingly. “You mean the Hegemony?”
Emily shook her head.
“No. It’s… become very complicated. But, let’s not waste our time talking about this,” she said, seizing his arm and clinging to it. “That isn’t important. Because I’m very confident that everything is going to work out for both of us.”
“For you, maybe. For me, I’m not even sure what that might entail,” Alex complained.
Emily poked him in the side, between his ribs, making him jump and cry out in surprise. He rubbed the spot and stared at her resentfully.
“You are the least romantic boy,” Emily chided.
* * *
“What do you think, Vlad? Has Alice brought me something I can use?”
“I think so,” Vladimir said slowly, chewing on the end of his pen. “It’s hard to work out the hierarchy, but there’s no doubt – the Witches are at the top. These two should be worth something to them, if we can figure out how to contact them and how to make the offer.”
Gaul adjusted his glasses, looking at the two figures, each in their own individual and mostly barren cells, one-way glass inset between them and their observers. Both were women, both wore bulky red jumpsuits with no pockets, and both were shaved smooth and bald. One still had splints on the fingers of both hands, and a healing bruise on the side of her jaw, while the other seemed in relatively good shape. Though wouldn’t have been apparent to the casual observer, neither of the prisoners were even remotely human.
“What do you suppose they would be worth?”
“That’s hard to say,” Vladimir said, fussing over the piece of machinery that he had been messing about with since Gaul arrived, something that looked quite a bit like a slide projector. “Since we started the operation, we’ve managed to kill six of them and capture two. That’s in contrast to the dozens of Weir and human causalities they’ve suffered during the same period. Clearly, they are willing to sacrifice their pawns in order to protect the Witches, so they must be valuable. But how valuable? That’s hard to say when we don’t know their priorities. What do you want to do with them?”
“One of the teams we lost in Shanghai,” Gaul said quietly, his voice terse. “They didn’t die; they simply disappeared from Alistair’s grid in mid-operation. The current theory is that they are alive, and are held somewhere. We have had similar incidents in the past few years. There could be as many as a dozen prisoners, assuming any of them are still alive. I want them back. Failing that, I want their bodies. After what happened with Edward, I don’t want any repeats.”
“Prisoner exchange, huh?” Vladimir said thoughtfully, as he extracted a lens from the device that he was working on, setting it down carefully on a sheet of wax paper. “That might work. Hard to say, when we don’t even know if they want their prisoners back. We don’t know if their culture puts any kind of priority on individual Witches. Maybe they write them off as soon as they are captured. Maybe this was prompted by us taking prisoners in the first place. They may as well be aliens. Who knows what they think?”
Gaul leaned up close to the one-way glass, peering through it at their longer-term captive, the less battered of the two Witches. She perched on the minimal cot she had been provided, staring at the featureless wall in front of her, her expression blank.
“Do they ever do anything? Every time I come down here, they are sitting there, staring into space…”
“They scream when Alice and Mark come to take them downstairs,” Vladimir said, shaking his head disapprovingly. “The new one, the one that Alice brought back from New York, she still spits and claws at anyone who comes into her cell. We have to restrain her just to hose the thing down every other week. The Witch we captured in San Diego was the same way until Alice got upset, and broke both her arms and her left knee. Since then she’s been more talkative. Her name is Evelyn, apparently – or at least, that’s what she calls herself. She’ll respond if you talk to her, she’ll answer if you ask her a question, though I don’t think they’ve gotten anything particularly useful out of her.”
“Because she doesn’t know anything or because she’s recalcitrant?”
Vladimir took a replacement lens from a rack on the nearby table, carefully handling it by the edges, and slotted it cautiously in an arcane machine. A circle flared briefly around him, a swirl of dancing letters that disappeared as fast as they had materialized.
“I’m not certain,” Vlad admitted, breathing an obvious sigh of relief as he screwed in the new lens. “But since our own dear Alice Gallow is involved, I wouldn’t put any money on her holding out. She’s seems traumatized, if that’s even possible with these creatures. Rebecca suspected that they might not have emotions at all, or not the same ones as us, but that they have learned to mimic ours to their advantage. She certainly seems frightened of Alice, but who isn’t? Go talk to her, if you are curious.”
“I might,” Gaul said, looking through the glass at the women on the other side. “How are you holding up, Vlad?”
“Better than most,” Vladimir retorted, glaring at Gaul. “And if that’s what you came down here to discuss, then you wasted your time.”
“If you say so,” Gaul said, turning back to the window. “How do I talk to her?”
* * *
The lights were already on in the kitchen when Anastasia walked in, glad she’d bothered to put on a nightdress. She cleared her throat and then waited politely for Emily to notice her.
“Oh,” she
said, looking up from the refrigerator. “I guess you didn’t have enough dinner, either?”
“No,” Anastasia admitted, walking into the kitchen, the silk of her slip moist with the humidity of the night. “I have this problem with cooks. The ones that aren’t vegans hate cooking for me because I’m a vegan. The vegan ones are all so crazy that I can’t stand to eat their food three days in a row. Have you ever had a jackfruit-and-tofu scramble? Because I was served one, and I’m still not sure if it was an attempt on my life or a sincere effort to feed me.”
Emily laughed, closed the refrigerator and opened a nearby cupboard, stretching to see what was on the upper shelf. The t-shirt she wore was tight enough that it had to stretch to accommodate the movement.
“You’ve lost weight,” Anastasia observed.
“Thank you,” Emily said brightly.
“And that’s why you’re here…”
“Yeah,” Emily said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I never actually eat enough at dinner these days. Oh! Do you want popcorn?”
“Yes. Yes, I do want popcorn,” Anastasia said seriously. Blitzen came wandering cautiously in, following his mistress’s voice. His head emerged from the door tentatively, until he determined that the staff, who would not have tolerated him in the kitchen, were nowhere in sight. He sidled up next to them and nudged Anastasia’s hand until she relented and scratched behind his ears. “Emily, why aren’t you with Alex? It’s only ten…”
Emily’s smile was utterly joyless.
“He fell asleep,” Emily said resentfully. “Do you know where the popcorn maker is?”
In fact, Anastasia had only been in the kitchen on a half dozen occasions in her entire life, and didn’t know where anything was. As such, she was reduced to helping Emily open the dozens of identical, white-painted drawers, hunting for anything that resembled a popcorn maker. At the very least, she managed to salvage some of her ego by being the one to find it, on her fifth try. She still had to let Emily operate it, though, since she understood the making of popcorn only in theory.
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