She opened her mouth, then closed it, but kept her lips open. Breath hissed over and through her teeth. “The barge,” she said. “It was attacked.”
Gabe reeled. He didn’t need to ask what barge she meant. There was only one barge, as far as the sorcerers of the Ice were concerned: the barge where they kept their Hosts in stasis, suspended against the need for great magic, to keep them out of trouble, and coincidentally under the Ice’s thumb. He’d found it, but he was almost a Host himself. How could the Flame have done it? With their own Hosts? Were they that reckless? He thought all this. He said: “What?”
“South of the city. By Flame. Some Hosts were taken.”
His voice rose on its own. “We just about killed ourselves trying to keep the Flame from getting their hands on a single Host, and now—”
“I know,” she cut back. “And that is why I need your help. Some new figure, some authority, has sent the Flame spinning. I need to know who this person is. Knowing, we can track their activities, and find the missing Hosts. I hope.”
Gabe glanced at his watch. Five minutes. He could still make it. “Things are bad, aren’t they?”
“The world,” she said, “is always one step from disaster. But some days the step is smaller than usual.”
• • •
Every goddamn thing was going wrong for Jordan Rhemes.
Except, of course, for business.
Business was great. Business was booming. That was part of the problem. Much as she’d tried to keep herself out of the affairs of Their High and Most Puissant Whatevers, the Sorcerers of Ice and the Cultists of Flame, keep her nose to the grindstone, tend her bar and perform her rituals and sell her charms and make sure nobody got hurt, she’d let Gabe drag her into a grand ritual to stop the Flame from getting their hands on a Host. Dumb idea? Certainly. Would she encourage a repeat performance? No. But she’d rocked the boat, and whatever had happened on the Vltava a couple days ago—she made it her business not to know—was the boat rocking back, and when the boat started rocking, people wanted life preservers.
Or so she’d been told. She didn’t like boats. Don’t trust anything with a foundation you can’t see.
So she’d run through her backlog stock of charms in two days: good, fine, whatever. The extra cash in her safe and favors in her ledger and barter stock on her shelves felt nice. But people kept coming. Which drew attention of the mundane sort—she’d already laid out more than she would have liked for a second, preemptive round of protection money, always stay one step ahead of demand—and that meant that she had to spend time she’d usually spend behind the bar at work in her small lab. And her bartenders could not swap shifts easily, and hiring was difficult, and servers kept getting sick, and so on and so goddamn forth.
She settled an argument about shift changes with one of her bartenders, then pushed into her back room to find the broken chairs she stashed there full of local hedgewitches and magic-mongers, rising to their feet, hands out, and of course each one of those was here first, and each had the greatest need.
“Jordan, s’il vous plaît—”
“Jordan, all we need is—”
“Jordan, just one favor—”
Mostly women, mostly European, a few men. She shoved past them, wandered down her long stockroom—shelves of critical reagents all but bare, sage supply depleted—to her office, where she collapsed against the door and breathed, until seeds of patience sprouted in the barren garden of her soul.
Just take them one at a time. If they ask too much, if they need more than you’re willing to give, or offer—say no.
She opened the door, squared her shoulders, arched her neck like a prince, and strode back up the winding hall to the room where the hedgewitches waited.
They were gone.
All save one: A short-haired young woman of, Jordan guessed, Vietnamese descent, waited against one wall. She wore a gray collared shirt and dark gray slacks and boots. No sign remained of Jordan’s other badgerers.
“Bon soir,” the woman said, sounding bored.
“You scared them off,” Jordan replied, also in French.
“Nah.” The woman uncrossed her arms, and as the fabric moved Jordan judged the size of the muscles it hid. “Sometimes people find it uncomfortable to be around me. It looked like you could use a moment’s peace.”
Jordan crossed to the door that led out into the bar, and set her hand on the knob. The other woman didn’t seem to take the hint. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I’m new in town,” she said. “You’re Jordan?”
Jordan did not answer.
“You can call me Van. I’ve heard of you, but I don’t know the lay of the land in Prague.”
“Looking to settle down?”
“Just passing through. But I don’t know how long I’ll be here.” She met Jordan’s eyes, and dropped the disaffected act. She had a good smile when she wanted to, and it made her look younger. Jordan didn’t know many people who could still look that young. “I don’t like being in the dark. I run into things.”
“It’s an easy town,” Jordan offered. “Plenty of hedge stuff out in the countryside, but I’m it where big work’s concerned, unless you want to cozy up with one of the factions.”
“Good thing for me you’re friendly.”
“Good thing.” What else? “Flame and Ice are all over the local government and embassies, so stay clear of both.”
“What else is new?”
That might have been an invitation—the traveler eager to share her story, cozying up to the local innkeeper, preface to a sob story with a hook in it. Or it might have been a tip of the hat, from one player to another. “Have you been in the game long?” A neutral enough question.
Van glanced down at her knuckles, and made a fist. “All my life.”
Jordan liked this girl. Which was a problem. She had plenty of castaways to worry about; Gabe, for starters. “First drink at the bar’s on the house, the next one you pay for.” She opened the door. Bar Vodnář’s murmured conversation and jazz intruded on the stockroom silence. “Welcome to Prague. Any other questions?”
“Just one,” Van said. “Is there anywhere around here I can box?”
• • •
Either Josh was about to die, or the night was going much better than expected.
He’d met Kazimir in the cafe, sat down, shared a pot of bad tea and a plate of blini, during which neither they, nor anyone in the café, for that matter, spoke. After they finished the blini, the young man who’d tailed Josh from the bus station entered the cafe and sat in the corner without ordering anything or looking at anyone, especially Kazimir.
Kazimir nodded at nothing, paid for the tea and blini, and walked out into the night. Josh huddled deeper in his coat and followed him. They walked down to the river and into warehouse country: big buildings, empty if they weren’t packed with shipping crates. Kazimir opened a side door in one particularly decrepit building with a key from the ring at his belt, and led Josh down a hallway lit only by the streetlights outside, to a stairway leading down.
Oh yeah. Definitely about to die.
Kazimir went first. Josh figured his chances if he ran. With all that bulk, Kazimir shouldn’t be very fast on his feet. But, Josh’d been paying attention: The big guy didn’t seem to have any weapons, and he hadn’t been acting strange, or any stranger than he had at the docks. Frank knew where he was, and—what had he done, anyway? Nothing to tip them off. He hoped. Hadn’t even gone back to the embassy. Just wandered the waterfront, idle, as inconspicuous as he could manage.
He followed.
The stairs led to a door, behind which Josh heard people talking, and a trace of music.
Kazimir moved.
Josh had been through basic, and he’d had his share of street fights before, but nothing he knew prepared him to be caught up in a bear hug by an enormous man who, while Josh was still processing, said, “Amerikansk
i, I like you.”
Josh couldn’t breathe.
Kazimir put him down, but kept one massive hand on his shoulder. “You come alone to meeting! You do not ask, ‘Where are we going.’ You do not say, ‘What assurances do I have that you, Kazimir, will not kill me.’ Is good! So we are not having to kill you.”
“Ah,” Josh said. “You speak English?”
“Learn from movies!”
“Thanks. For not killing me.”
“Perhaps we can even do business.” And Kazimir opened the door.
The room looked—about like Josh had expected, to be honest: big and unfinished and cement, interrupted by pillars, with a loading door in one wall, crates strewn around in some order, presumably, and a few tables set up in the corner by another, longer crate, on which stood a shield wall of liquor bottles and some dubiously washed glasses. He had not, however, expected the boxing ring.
“Is good, yes?” Kazimir asked. “Boxing for friends. Some nights, many come, there are big fights, we take bets, small bets, on the side, you know, good money, good fun. Fighters come from all around. Perhaps even you, ah?”
“I don’t think so,” Josh said. “I bruise easily.” He scanned the room, right to left, like he’d been taught. A double handful of men, drinking or playing cards or lifting weights. A few women. One, in fact, working the punching bag in the far corner of the room.
Josh recognized that right hook.
It was amazing how much the human body could do without the interference of the conscious mind. Somehow his legs kept walking, without running into things, even, while his brain was months in the past, in an alley halfway across the city, watching a woman with a Moscow accent lay out a Czech secret service man. And then, in the French embassy, that same woman in a low-backed dress.
They hadn’t found a name for her yet, but she was in the Audubon Book of Spies all the same.
What the fuck were the Russians doing here?
Did Kazimir know? Were the Russians working with this little group of businessmen already? Or was she setting them up?
She hadn’t seen him. She was too focused on kicking that punching bag’s ass. He turned his back on her.
“Follow,” Kazimir said, waving him toward a side door. “For private business, yes?”
“Who’s that girl?” he asked, softly. “In the corner.”
Kazimir’s arm settled around Josh’s shoulder, and his fingers bit into Josh’s arm. “Your interest, I understand, but is a tale of woe, my friend, for she is not intrigued by Kazimir. But! Is okay. She is a good woman: is Russian, embassy secretary, is liking boxings and Amerikanski books. No trouble to us. Come. Let us discuss business.”
Fists struck canvas as the door swung shut.
3.
Tanya slunk home that night hungry, angry, and tired—so, when she heard a footstep behind her in her ostensibly empty apartment, she swung first.
She missed, ended up with a fistful of jacket, got her other hand on the person’s lapel, and tugged them down and across her outstretched leg. Somewhere in the movement, though, her balance got skewed, or her intruder found their footing, and Tanya ended up being the one wheeling through shadows to strike the wall. Sparks danced in front of her eyes, and her top teeth bounced against her bottom teeth. Strong hands forced her arms back; she kneed whoever it was in the groin, but they twisted their hips, and turned her knee aside.
“Tanya Mikhailovna,” said the intruder in Russian, in a voice Tanya recognized. “Stop. Please.”
She stopped. Just enough light passed into her apartment through her curtains’ gap to shape Nadia’s face in the dark. She smelled lemons and lavender.
“How did you get into my apartment?”
Nadia shook her head, like the question was either ridiculous or self-evident. On reflection, Tanya supposed it was. “Why did you contact Pritchard?”
How did she know? Tanya pushed against Nadia’s grip. The other woman did not release her, not at once. “Let go.”
Then Nadia did, but did not step back. They remained too close for comfort. “You know as well as I do: Counterintelligence is all over the American embassy. We ruined their defection—”
“To keep a Host out of the hands of the Flame.”
“Still, the defection was ruined. The CIA cannot ignore their operation’s failure. So they have sent their creatures. We need Gabe—and the worst possible thing we can do now is have anything to do with him. We discussed this. You and I. You said, and I agreed, that we should only contact him in an emergency. So. What is the emergency?”
Tanya slid out past Nadia, and walked to the kitchenette. She took a bottle of vodka and a pickle jar from the refrigerator, and two glasses and a small plate from the cabinet. “A new Flame superior has come to town. With Sasha compromised, we do not have enough resources to identify this person. Gabe has more freedom, even with the investigation.”
Nadia stalked forward. She circled Tanya, and Tanya remembered how she looked in the boxing ring: dancing around the edge, testing her target’s speed, their reflexes, watching their eyes and the way they shifted weight. “How do you know that?”
Tanya’s hand shook. To cover, she used it to open the pickle jar lid. Juice splashed on the counter. “What do you mean?”
“How do you know the Flame has sent a new witch?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” She mopped up the spill with a towel. “The barge hit—”
“The Flame has a presence here already. They did not need new people to hit our barge.”
Tanya looked into the pickle jar, chose two, and placed them on the plate. “I heard from Zerena.” She slid the vodka across the counter without looking up.
“Have you gone mad, Tanya?”
“Drink the vodka. Please.”
“Don’t tell me to drink the vodka. That woman is dangerous, and clever, and we have no idea how deep her roots in the Flame extend. She is not the kind of person we want to fuck with.”
“I can handle her,” Tanya said, without looking up.
Nadia didn’t answer.
Tanya clutched the edge of the table. “She and Sasha are enemies. And Sasha is our number one problem—we are hamstrung with an acolyte in the station chief’s seat. And Sasha knows I’m Ice, which gives him a hold on me. We can use her to deal with him. I can use her.”
“She plays the game at a high level. She fought her way tooth and nail from nowhere to power.” Whereas you, Nadia did not need to say, spent your childhood being groomed to inherit. “She’s climbed a heap of bodies to get where she is today. You can’t use her.”
Tanya lifted the shot. “To your health.”
Nadia wasn’t looking at her, either; she was staring at the sliver of light beneath the curtains. She reached for her own shot and raised it to eye level. “So.”
They inhaled, exhaled, downed the vodka. It burned. Tanya ate her pickle. Nadia ate hers.
When the fire faded, Tanya spoke. “Some of the Hosts were captured in the barge raid.”
“Yes.”
“Was one of them Andula?”
Nadia drummed her fingertips once on the counter, then looked up. “Yes.”
• • •
The next morning felt like spring. Blue skies domed a city the sun transformed. Trees budded, flowers flirted with with blooming. Prague emerged, crouching, waiting for a blow.
Josh found Alestair smoking on the bridge, overlooking Old Town and the banks of the Vltava. The clock struck eight, reminding Josh of his hangover—he’d been drinking with Alestair again last night. He couldn’t keep this up. He wanted to keep it up forever.
The city had been moving for a long time already, of course. Josh finished his pastry.
Alestair uncoiled his arm and flicked cigarette ash into the river. “Every American should visit Paris at least once, I believe. It applies a certain veneer of culture, and would stop you from ever making the mistake of trusting Czech pastry.”
“Good morning to you, too.” Josh
stopped by the rail and watched the red roofs and the dashes of green by the bank. The smell of Alestair’s cigarettes reminded him of bars he liked back home, and of the company of friends. “Frank sent me out on a job.” He shouldn’t be telling Alestair this, but then, they were allies, and anyway, he was long past the point of paying attention to the list of things he shouldn’t be doing with Alestair. “Dealing with some… private sector types.”
“A hazard of entering the working world. Some days I do ask myself if it’s worth the excitement, the adventure, and the glorious sex.”
Josh colored, and even though Alestair wasn’t looking, his mouth approached a smile. He must have seen Josh blush out of the corner of his eye. “With Edith in town—you know Edith?—Frank wants me out of the office. So he kicked me this.”
“Admirable.” Alestair turned from the view, and walked toward the far bank. Josh trotted to catch up. “A neat solution to the problem.”
“I’m not a problem.”
“No, of course not, dear boy. But more field experience will be good for you. And we need to be quite careful with our careers.” He sounded so offhand. Josh wondered if he’d ever become that—was calm the right word? Resigned? Comfortable? If hiding would ever become so second nature that he thought of it purely as a tactical position, as a question of propriety and self-defense. “I sense a certain reluctance.”
“I’m working with crooks, Alestair.”
“Our work is not without its own crookedness.”
“They’re nice enough. But. I mean. Doesn’t it ever get you mad?”
The cigarette had burned to the filter. Alestair tossed it off the edge, as if strewing flower petals. Josh could have drawn him in three lines. “I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting, personally, your Edith from Counterintelligence, but I have seen her around. It’s wise not to work with her—at the very least because I enjoy our little chats, and the more knowledge she has of your schedule, the more difficult they will grow to arrange. But, in our work as in magic, a certain degree of misdirection is always welcome.” He raised his right hand: he still held, somehow, the smoldering cigarette Josh had seen him toss into the river. “It might behoove you to cultivate a certain… interest, in Edith. Nothing grotesque, mind. But she is a pleasant enough aesthetic specimen.”
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 6