Josh met his gaze for the first time that morning. Gabe read fear, sleepless nights, need. For what?
“Okay,” Josh said, and held out his hand; Gabe gripped it, and hugged him.
“We’re going to be fine.”
He’d learned to lie when he was a kid, but only after joining the service had he really gotten the knack. You just said the words, and you didn’t care if the other person believed.
And maybe Josh didn’t. But at least he said, “We will.”
• • •
Nadia never liked hooded robes, but the Ice relished its formalities, so here she was, hooded and robed, pacing around a chalk circle ringed with candles, in the center of which lay two medallions, each with a bit of cat’s eye agate at its heart. Incense drifted from a burner in the corner. Nadia’s throat felt raw from the chanting, and her legs and back and arms ached from the care and precision of the movements. The room’s walls and floor bulged, rippled, pulsed. Was that magic? Or were the ritual strain, the exhaustion, her nerves about tonight getting to her? Was there a difference?
That confusion, to be fair, was a core element of sorcery. Perception created reality, and reality perception, under the right circumstances, and with the proper tools.
She stumbled, or the floor did, and the bare wood walls around her hummed like a singing bowl properly rung. Alestair folded back his hood, so she did too. He pinched his nose. “Well. That’s almost done it, I should think. Just a touch of power, and the whole thing will fall into place.”
“Should we use a Host?”
“Let’s not.” He drew his hand back into his robe’s voluminous sleeve, and rummaged around inside. “If we draw off them, or if we draw off ley lines through them, we may tip our hand to the Flame early, and I’ll run no risks on that point. Let’s see, I have it around here somewhere—ah! Yes, there’s the beauty.” He produced a curved piece of glossy black wood, which had a dull, oily sheen in the candlelight.
“Is that an umbrella handle?”
“A bit of youthful indiscretion, I’m ashamed to admit, but we all have our peccadilloes now and then, no harm done.” Could he mean Van? Could he know about her? He was a spy, and a sorcerer: Of course he could. “Back when Humberto, Poggs, Nidknacker, and I were stationed in drippy old Siam, we seized on the occasion of a conjunction to make a slightly magical jest. Have you ever noticed how it never rains if you have an umbrella?”
She considered this. “It does in Moscow.”
“London, too, to be fair, but it was the principle of the thing, you see. So, since old Diamed, the local senior Ice muckety-muck, happened to be willing, we whipped up a ritual experiment. Bit of a mistake. It works, you see, but weather’s tricky: make the rain go away, and it may not come again another day. I retired the poor thing after its test drive, but, you know what they say, waste not.”
Nadia frowned. “Are we worried about rain?”
“I couldn’t care less about rain. Quickly now, before the walls stop ringing. Start the chant again.”
She did. She did not speak the syllables so much as open a gate within her and let them flow through: dark words issuing from the dawn of time. She imagined—or did her blood remember?—a woman in a cave, or perhaps on some green Greek hillside, with a knife, speaking the same words that her students then spoke, and their students, forward through history. Nadia was merely the most recent gate. All the words came from before.
Alestair took an emerald ring from his pocket, placed it on his ring finger, and dragged the emerald across the umbrella handle.
The wood cracked in two lengthwise, and a greenish golden fluid seeped out from within. Only the fluid did not fall: It waved and trickled through the air, a river following slopes Nadia could neither see nor feel.
She kept speaking, kept weaving. She let the past roll through her. Her arms rose and fell in postures long learned. The walls rang. Her bones shook from within. Her teeth hummed. The sound filled her skull and she chanted, as the fluid trickled, spiraled down through the air. Syllables of broken light tore her tongue.
The greenish gold touched the agates set in the silver charms.
A lightless flash blinded, a soundless crack deafened.
When Nadia recovered her senses, she found herself leaning against the (no-longer-humming) wall, panting. Her heart raced in her chest. She wanted to scream. She had no breath to scream.
Alestair sat cross-legged across the circle, bent over, wheezing. Sweat dripped from his nose. Nadia found her balance and ran to him—well, shuffled, but these things were relative. She touched his shoulder, which worried her. She had expected him to brush her away before she could. He gripped her hand instead.
“I’m not the man I once was,” he said, “much as it pains me to admit. Perhaps I should sit down before I try this the next time.”
“What was that?”
He tapped the ring. “A slightly less youthful indiscretion. We do not always have the leisure to find Hosts for our great work. What if one could cannibalize charged charms for the energy within, to build new enchantments? With the proper effort, one could build a charm for precisely such a purpose.”
“I have never heard of anything like that.”
“An uncommon trick,” he said, “and dangerous. I believe myself the only sorcerer to have managed it, though perhaps others did and kept their knowledge secret, as I have. Far easier to liberate all a charm’s power for a single effect, a blast or a shield or a light, but that’s a limited technique. Taking one charm’s essence and pouring it into another form feels like—well, like you felt just now. I miss the days when I had your stamina.”
Nadia barely heard the compliment. She sat beside him, and laced her hands in her lap. She realized she was tensing muscles across her back, down her arms, in her legs: feeling her strength. Her only strength, she felt, sometimes. She had never imagined one could use a charm like this. How little did she know, really? How little did any of them know? How far beyond her was this man by her side, and were there others even beyond him?
“My dear,” Alestair said, but was English enough to let embarrassment stop him from asking what bothered her. She could not have borne that direct concern. If Nadia believed in a god, she would have thanked her.
“There is so much to learn,” she said, believing this neutral enough.
He called himself back from the middle distance, and smiled, as if at a painful memory. “There is. And you will learn it. And you will surpass what’s come before, as we all have, in our little ways. Your work here in Prague has been critical. The organization of the Ice is slow to change, and slow to notice talent—we move with caution, and we always have. But you’ve more than proved yourself. Would I have shown you what I did, just now, were you not ready?”
She looked at him sideways.
“Mastery of the art,” he said, “differs from mastery of the physical world in one engaging particular: Just when we think we’ve explored all the continents, our art produces fresh uncharted territory. You have learned much, and there is much you have yet to learn. But under proper tutelage, you will. My tutelage, if you’ll have me as a teacher. And as for our mutual superiors, their formal recognition often lags reality. Your work will redound to your benefit. No, it’s our dear friend Tanya who worries me.”
Nadia blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Her exposure to the Flame, and her recent cooperation with Mrs. Pulnoc. Surely you’ve drawn the same conclusions I have.”
She listened to the silent walls. “She is loyal, if exposed. That makes her useful.”
“The ambassador’s wife, from what I’ve been able to determine, is a formidable adversary. And our poor girl is so close to compromise. We’ll have to watch her closely. I don’t mean that we should regard her as turned already, of course, merely—watch. She is your friend, I know. It’s a deuced difficult position to place you in.”
“It’s fine,” she said, before she could think the consequences through. “I’ll watch
her.” She should tell him: about Tanya and Zerena, about the file, the favor. Advancing her through the recruitment cycle. The more he knew, the more he could help her. Help them. Tanya was in danger, and needed all the help she could get.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
It was the right thing to say, here, next: “Zerena’s asked her for a favor.” Even though saying it made her feel sick. And what did that mean? What did that mean for her loyalties, for her own career? “She needs evidence to use against Sasha.”
“Ah.” Alestair nodded, expressionless, his mask once more in place. “Good. Internal Flame squabbling, we can handle. Even use, as the situation prompts. If the file in question can be traced to our friend, then of course she’s at risk of exposure to your masters in the KGB—but, since dear Sasha himself already knows of her affiliation with our little affair, the danger’s manageable. Thank you.”
He stood. Had that, itself, been a favor? And if so, for whom? Alestair didn’t need to recruit her; Nadia had bought in long ago. Why move her through the agent cycle, offering advantages, confidences, trusts, in exchange for scraps of information? Or was this just what some people called friendship?
It was often to Nadia’s advantage, as a spy, as a comrade, as a witch, to believe many contradictory things at once. She believed in friendship, in mutual support and care. She believed, and she did not.
Whatever her beliefs, she had work to do tonight.
Alestair stood, stepped across the circle, and draped one of the cat’s-eye agates around his neck. All at once, he changed: His hair went raven gray, his body thickened and condensed, his cheekbones sank into a muscling face, his nose broke. He looked like a boxer who had lost too many fights, but he still held his shoulders like an Oxbridge prig.
“How do I look?”
Nadia squinted. “Maybe if you slouch.”
3.
A black-clad guard met Josh and Edith and Gabe at the dockyard fence at nine, as agreed. Josh recognized the man, but didn’t know his name, and the man, for his part, didn’t respond in either Czech or Russian. He just raised his hand, and after a few nervous seconds, Kazimir jogged over, grim and determined and full of energy, a juggler reminding all his various extremities to keep their respective plates spinning. Kazimir and the guard exchanged curt nods—all business—but once they passed through the gate, Kazimir seized Josh in a fierce hug. “Is good you are here,” he said, once more the jolly guy with the ringside seats. “And your friends.”
“Yes,” Gabe said. Edith nodded.
“Good, good. All is in place, and you are on time. Again, my friends and bosses, they are very happy to have you help with our business. Excited about future possibilities, against Russkies, yes? Stop fearless leader! Like in Bullwinkle."
“You saw Bullwinkle?”
“When I can! Is often jammed—picture often fuzzy, but sound comes through just fine! Now. Follow.”
Josh followed. The gun in his shoulder holster seemed to weigh a lot more than two pounds.
They followed Kazimir down a narrow path between mounded crates into the shipping yard. Prague lights rippled on the black and green Vltava. A barge floated at the dock, riding high. “Arrived today,” Kazimir said. “Loading manifest prepared, pre-cleared. Our friend at customs cooperates nicely. Last barge, too long lingering in Prague, is likely what went wrong. This time, nothing left to chance. Straight in, straight out, yes?”
“Okay,” Josh said.
“Our men for loading barge.” Kazimir waved to the thickset men in gloves and canvas slacks, one of whom waved back before his partner elbowed him in the ribs. “Fastest crew on docks. Greatest risk—” He pointed up a long concrete ramp to the fence, and the street. “Is there, someone perhaps follows in the truck. So we have gunman on the crates, there, we have other gunman on the crane, and on the ground, three here on the left, you three also on the right, behind the car. Do not worry, car is no gas, will not blow up!” He laughed. “What do you say? Pretty good, I think.”
Josh glanced from the car to the gate, to the sniper in the crane, started figuring angles. He thought about ambushes, and visibility, and realized that he had only the faintest idea what sort of questions he should ask, and what answers might be acceptable.
He glanced left, at Gabe, who cracked something that wasn’t quite a grin.
“Okay,” Josh said. “It’s good. Let’s go.”
• • •
Sasha Komyetski worked late—or at least, stayed in his office late, which was far from the same thing. Tanya would have given a great deal to learn what he did in there, but section chiefs’ offices tended to be built to let as few people as possible know what went on inside them. Fortunately, Tanya had a lot of paperwork to catch up on. She could wait.
Sasha’s old friend Alexei Petranovich was in town for a trade meeting that, for once, had something to do with actual trade. All Tanya had to do was wait at her desk until Sasha bustled down the hall and through the rezidentura doors. She waited for a few minutes, a stack of meaningless paperwork in front of her, in case Sasha might have forgotten something, and returned.
Ten minutes passed, fifteen. He was gone.
She ran to Sasha’s office, knelt, picked his lock, and stepped into the center of the spiderweb.
Sasha’s office, with Sasha in it, had a cheery menace: the stacks of paper, the chessboards and their half-finished games, the maps piled over other maps, the scholarly uncle’s madcap office. The cheer departed with Sasha. The menace lingered.
She jostled a chessboard as she eased the door closed. Cursed to herself, and returned the pieces to their proper places, wasting ten seconds. She had allowed herself three minutes, no more, in here: She didn’t need to case the office, plenty of time for that later if she developed suicidal tendencies. Just get the file, get out.
Twenty seconds to slip the latch on the filing cabinet behind his desk, another thirty to search it, and fifteen to search again: no file. Calm yourself. Lock the cabinet again behind you. Twenty seconds.
Other cabinets, other cabinets—there, disguised as an end table, beneath a linen cloth. Fifteen. Pick that lock, fail to, try again. Another thirty.
The cabinet opened. Ten to search—there. Zerena’s file. Confirm: don’t want to have to do this again. Close the cabinet, lock. Drape the linen cloth just so. Fifteen seconds remaining.
She was out of Komyetski’s office and halfway down the ops room when her three minutes were up.
And from the hall outside, approaching, she heard Sasha Komyetski’s booming laugh, his voice, pitched higher than usual, excited, woven with another man’s—Alexei Petranovitch, had to be—singing some old army song, and approaching the office.
She froze for a heartbeat she could not afford. Then she dove for her desk, behind it, beneath it. Curled herself into the cavity below, and pulled the chair close, shoving her head between the seat and the underside of the table. They couldn’t see her. Probably they couldn’t see her. Unless they stopped. Unless they checked beneath the desks.
The rezidentura door opened.
“—and such difficulties as I have had, my dear friend, you should never believe were I to spend a hundred years describing them. That being so, this post is nevertheless a pleasant experience, though to be so far from my dear aged parents and the family of my sister causes me such pain I bear it with great difficulty, if indeed I bear it at all.”
“My good Sasha, this is, indeed, the common fate of all who serve the motherland. In the cause of global revolution, we accept certain sacrifices, yes?”
Tanya, breathing shallowly, legs cramping, hemmed in by steel, wondered if they were being serious, and why holding still felt so easy until you had to.
“We do, yes, of course we do. But, fortunately, the motherland, and the people, ease the pain of our sacrifice.” Their voices faded as they neared Sasha’s office. His door opened. “And some of this recompense is composed of fine Cuban tobacco.”
The doo
r closed.
Tanya ran.
• • •
The Ice was late.
Waves washed against the dock, and washed again. A small fishing boat motored by on the river.
Gabe stood beside the car. He checked his watch. Three minutes past the deadline. Of course, the fact the Ice were late didn’t mean anything in particular, didn’t mean anything necessarily. This was a covert op. Schedule mattered, yes, but so did the covert part. If making the deadline would require compromising the security of a crosstown delivery on whose cargo the fate of the world literally depended—well. If it were Gabe behind the wheel, he’d be stopping at every light on the way.
He wished he could tell the Czech goons that. They looked antsy: clutching their weapons, pacing. One reedy son of a gun must have smoked an entire pack of shitty cigarettes since arrival. They didn’t like being exposed. Gabe didn’t blame them.
As outfits went, Gabe had served with worse; Kazimir chose good men, strong blunt-nosed bone-breakers who seemed to know their way around a scrap. Problem was, they’d never even seen the kind of scrap this might become tonight, if things went wrong.
Not, to be fair, that he’d seen it, either. If an Ice-and-Flame firefight broke out with this many Hosts around—he didn’t know what might happen. Best play it by ear, and trust to the guns.
Edith leaned against the car hood, her hand quick-draw distance from her pistol. Josh stood, hands in pockets, humming to himself. He watched the road, and watched Kazimir, who watched everything, including his watch.
“Hey,” Gabe said, and Josh didn’t exactly jump. Started, though. “These are your guys. Talk to Kaz over there—ask him to touch in. The delivery’s running a little late. We need them alert when it shows up, not spooked.”
“Huh?” No telling where Josh had been—Mars, maybe.
Gabe looked for him, somewhere behind his eyes. “Talk to your buddy Kaz. Calm his men down. We need them alert when the truck shows up—loose and ready to go. Not spooked.”
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 29