“I—I thought—” I stumbled, fighting to keep my real alarm separate from the pretense. “I thought that’s why you wanted to talk to me! Because you want to hire him to—to break codes and ciphers for you and—I’m sorry! I won’t say a word. I promise. Please don’t be angry with me.”
Avior’s expression cleared as I spoke, and he resumed his avuncular guise by patting my hand again. “Quite all right, Miss Cartier. I’m not angry. I should have known you’d guess. I said you were perspicacious!”
I went weak at that, as much in real relief as in false, but he pinned me back down with a frown. “There is one other matter,” he said, and steadied his nerves with more patting. “It’s awkward and embarrassing, but during your time in Avior, you must have heard the slander my enemies spread about me. The nonsense about demonology.”
I had, as it happened. Frequently. One of my classmates had grown up in the neighborhood of Avior Manor, and had told us about the time her beloved dog had disappeared, along with every other pet in a half-mile radius. I also had it on good authority that Lucio’s obsession was the reason Gil had originally been the one chosen as prefect, although Lucio was the older brother.
There hadn’t been any recent scandals, so Lucio must have learned caution—but since my boss had contacted him by posing as an expert on a demonology forum, I suspected caution was the only thing he’d learned.
“It’s fine,” Avior assured me. “I’m used to it. Their lies have even proven somewhat useful, because I end up hearing about the crazies who really are interested in such superstitious nonsense. You’d be shocked at how respectable some of them seem, before you know the truth about them. I even heard that Jon Nordfeld—”
I snatched my hand back. “How dare you!”
“I didn’t finish.”
“You didn’t have to!” I cried, too enraged to respect the rules of rank. “And if you think for one moment that I will sit here and listen to you slander the most respectable, gracious, gentlemanly man on the planet, then you can think again!”
“He never mentioned—”
“Certainly not. And I’ll thank you to keep your nasty implications to yourself. For shame!”
Avior studied me, taking in the heaving chest, the brimming indignation and righteous offense, the way I didn’t shy from eye contact.
“My apologies,” he said at last, “but as prefect, I must ask these things.” He leaned back and tapped three times on the driver’s barricade.
I slashed my furious glare over to the seat opposite, squeezing my handbag hard as the limo slowed.
“I hope,” Prefect Avior said as the limo settled to a stop, “that you’ll keep this conversation privileged.”
“I know my duty!” I flashed at him and then relented from anger to mere stiffness. “I didn’t mean to offend you, my lord. I mean, I realize that you did need to ask.”
“I did,” he agreed, “and I thank you for taking a weight off my mind. Have a nice day, Miss Cartier.”
“You too, prefect. And . . . and I am sorry about your brother.”
The limo door opened, and golden-white light rushed its rhombus upon the seats. I scooted down and let the head knight hand me out of the neon-lit stale smoke and onto the sun-warmed sidewalk. After nodding politely, I walked directly back to the Carinan Security Service building, not looking around until I reached the door. Then I paused and watched the limo drive away, a glittering sapphire worm among black beetles. I wasn’t feeling wistful; I just wanted to make sure it really left.
It did, and I went in.
There is something wonderfully calming about the ritual of making tea, although I slopped boiling water onto the tray and rattled cups in their saucers. That’s adrenaline for you: terribly inconvenient when it’s not busy saving your life.
Anyway, a little hand-trembling didn’t matter, not now that Avior couldn’t see me. So I let the cups clatter as I carried the tray back to the office and set it on the desk.
My boss took one look at me and said, “Something is wrong.”
I’d eat glass before looking foolish in front of him. I sat on my hands so I didn’t jiggle, and I gave a full report. My memory’s not perfect, but I wouldn’t be forgetting that conversation for a long, long time.
“Did he suspect you?” my boss asked, when I was done.
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“I’m certain.”
He relaxed back into his chair. “Good. Then we can proceed as planned.”
Chapter 2:
Burglary
That was Tuesday. The rest of the business week passed in a flurry, but a flurry of the ordinary sort. We did not solve the new cipher—yet—but my boss concentrated on it while I handled the more ordinary work.
Friday evening, in a daze of too many hours of unwinding ciphers that had undergone some particularly grotesque mistakes, I staggered home: away from the parking garage, across my apartment complex, up the concrete stairs—and straight into a choking cloud of garlic and chili oil.
“Luc!” I tried to yell, and devolved into hacking coughs. Stuffing my sleeve over my nose and mouth, I bulled across the living room to throw open the balcony door, then charged to the kitchen window, the stove fan, the overhead fan, and—
“Where’s the box fan?” I demanded between coughs. “You know it’s meant to live by the balcony, Luc. So you can open the door and turn it on when you cook toxic foods. Like we agreed.”
Luc, who can eat wasabi straight and has lungs of titanium, gave me an amused glance and continued transferring noodles from the sizzling wok to his plate. “I made plenty for you.”
“Box fan!”
“It’s cooling Elspeth. Don’t move it. I need to take her apart; she’s been gathering dust.”
“I thought that was Kirsty,” Francis said, toweling off his hair as he ambled in. “Good evening, Mercedes. I see you’ve arrived just in time for food.” Shower heat lingered in his cheeks and puffed his fingertips. Francis bathing on a Friday evening might mean a date, but it had also rained today, and rain meant a muddy construction site, so there was hope that Girlfriend #44 had dumped him.
Francis tossed the damp towel on the sofa and made a beeline for the food. “Do you mind closing the balcony door?” he asked me. “It’s freezing in here.”
“Are you insane?”
“She’s in a bad mood,” Luc informed him sotto voce.
“Impossible,” Francis proclaimed. “She’s late. That means she got to spend extra time at work, and you know how she loves her work.”
“Adores him,” Luc agreed. “I mean ‘it.’ It’s so . . . stimulating.”
“Now, now, Luc. She doesn’t appreciate us being flippant about it.”
“But we’re only flippant because we don’t understand him!”
“There is a solution to that,” Francis said, tapping his chin wisely. “We must get to know him. We should invite him to dinner! You could cook him something impressive, Luc. Or do you think Mercy would rather serve him?”
“I’m not inviting him,” I said. “Besides, he wouldn’t come.”
Luc swung an arm around my shoulders. “Faint heart never won fair boss man.”
I pushed him off and busied myself getting a plate.
“At least tell us his name,” Luc persisted. “I have mad internet stalking skills.”
“What’s in here, Luc?” I asked, poking around the wok. Luc is a superb cook, but he does like to experiment. “These aren’t shrimp.”
“I wanted to try snook. Focus, Mercedes. You were about to tell us your boss’s name.”
I threw a chunk of snook at him. He caught and ate it.
Despite the teasing, chili oil, and parade of insipid girlfriends, I liked living with my brothers. After six years in university, where I had my roommates variously under my thumb and twirled around my little finger, it was refreshing to live with people who were neither intimidated nor impressed by me, and whom I could be sure were hones
t. Best of all, I could flyte as hard as I liked against my brothers without damaging any delicate egos. The fact that Luc was about a thousand times better at cooking than any of my previous roommates (or I) certainly didn’t hurt.
Our apartment was on the outskirts of Silvertip City—for reasons lost to time, both the capital city and the prefecture are called Silvertip—and entirely satisfactory. It’s a petite three bedroom, two bath with a big enough kitchen that Luc didn’t complain as long as neither Francis nor I tried to use it while he was cooking. Between us, we could have afforded something bigger, but there didn’t seem to be any point: none of us was a packrat, and only Luc spent the majority of his time there, destroying his spine over various computers.
Working from home won Luc the right to decorate and redecorate the apartment to his heart’s content, which meant I’d grown used to an ever-rotating collection of Celtic metal, Celtic Christian, Celtic rock, and just plain Celtic band posters. I could barely tell one from the next, though I nodded sagely when Luc patiently explained the difference between one selection of long-haired, kilted redheads and the next.
Francis had only once shown any interest in decorating, when he’d hung a framed Psalm 23 near the front door. As for me, I’d spent weeks hunting down the pinkest, sparkliest unicorn poster this side of the rainbow, and had centered it above the TV. When anyone (usually girlfriends of Francis, but occasionally of Luc) asked about it, I proclaimed straight-faced that it was my favorite piece of art in the whole wide world and that I had an identical one at work.
“So, my furry little guinea pigs,” Luc said, rubbing his hands together and bouncing his eyebrows, “what do you say to—”
“No,” said Francis, around a mouthful of his third plate of noodles.
“I agree,” I said. “If this one doesn’t have a rocket launcher, it’s not worth playing. Really, Luc, I don’t care if that game was set in a medieval forest-castle-moat-fairy kingdom. Rocket launchers are essential.”
“Rocket launchers are overrated,” Luc said primly. “In this one, your only weapon is a butter knife. You see, you were using it to spread jam on toast when the zombie apocalypse—” He laughed at our expressions. “Fine, it has a rocket launcher. I want feedback primarily on scratch and decapitation effects.”
“For realism, comedy, or squick factor?” I asked.
“You tell me,” Luc said. “I want honest reactions here.”
“What do you say, Mercedes?” Francis asked, swallowing his last forkful of noodles. “Team up and take him down?”
“It’s not a team game!” Luc protested.
“Partners,” I agreed. “Until I turn on you and rocket launcher you to bits.”
“Until you try, you mean.”
I winked at him, and we headed to the living room to perform a serious analysis of Luc’s digital artwork.
Among its other charms, the apartment I share with my brothers sits on the upper of two stories, directly above an older lady with a pug and a serious cigar addiction. At this very moment, three hours after we’d finished dinner, she was out on her balcony, puffing hard over a bodice-ripper and oblivious to everything.
From the living room, shrieks and zombie noises blasted. Most of the noise emanated from the TV, but maybe twenty percent of the shrieks were from Francis and Luc, who’d be ducking and head-shotting shambling corpses into the wee hours of the morning.
Safe in my bedroom, I shucked my dress suit in favor of a soft maroon turtleneck, navy split skirt, and soft-soled black tennis shoes. A charcoal wool coat with matching gloves and hat shoved in the pocket finished the ensemble. My skin and hair are dark enough that, unlike my boss, I wouldn’t have to go full mummy mode—so no ski mask needed.
Thus suitably attired, I pulled on my backpack and lifted my window open. With some maneuvering, but far less noise than staving off the zombie apocalypse, I popped out the screen and slid it under my bed. Then I climbed onto the window sill.
It’d been years since I’d last snuck out of my bedroom window, and grown women are a lot less springy than teenagers. It took much more grunting than I expected to squirm onto my belly, pull the window mostly closed, dangle from my fingertips, and drop down to the grass. There’d be no climbing back up this way, but even my brothers should be asleep by the time I got back—unless Francis’s insomnia got him, in which case I’d have to do some fast talking.
Wincing over my shins, I hobbled off to the bus station. It was ten minutes away, and twenty minutes after I reached it, I was boarding the last train south.
Dust and concrete, gasoline and metal: these are the smells of train stations to me. Onboard, those smells fade in the background, overwhelmed by luggage, trampled carpet, old sweat, and sanitizer: cold, humid smells that render food unsatisfying and stretch minutes into hours. Books become harder to read and less interesting when you try; games lose their excitement; and your fellow passengers are the dullest creatures on the planet.
I shall never understand why I enjoy traveling by train.
I elbowed my way down the train cars, starting in first class, eying the closed food trolley and its inaccessible coffee, and finally finding my boss in the last car.
His backward-facing double seat shared a table with an empty forward-facing double seat, over which he’d spread his coat to guard it from occupation. Artificial light bounced off his sandy-brown hair (thinning slightly above the forehead) and made clusters of half-hearted shadows at his feet. Aside from his eyes, there was nothing in his appearance to draw attention, nothing that indicated he was anything other than—well, than the boring mid-level pencil pusher my brothers thought he was.
I folded his coat and sat across from him to wait for his attention. A finger rose off the top edge of his book to ward me off. By the look of it, he was adding another obscure language to his collection. My boss collects knowledge like Luc collects Celtic bands.
I used the pause as an opportunity to take stock.
My boss had dressed sensibly and plainly in dark gray sweater and trousers, and the meticulous pile beside him included dark green scarf and hat, and black leather gloves. The edge of his briefcase peeked unobtrusively from beneath the pile.
He had chosen our seats well. I could see almost everyone, and he no one, and no one but our nearest neighbors could see us. Even the toilets lay in the opposite direction.
The train was about a quarter full: couples tucked close in conversation; college students visiting home for the weekend, laughing together near the front of the car and playing on their phones; lone businesspeople staring mindlessly out their windows or stuffing themselves with junk food; one elderly lady intent on her knitting and another submerged in a mystery novel. The lateness of the hour spared us small children; the youngest I spotted looked about fourteen, earbudded and asleep.
The train juddered to life, and my boss lowered his book, not marking the page anywhere except in his memory. “You had a pleasant evening, I hope,” he said. I translated this as: Did anyone notice or follow you?
“Francis stole my rocket launcher,” I said, “but I found a flamethrower and burned him to a crisp before dying of my wounds. You?”
“I paid the Craftsmen a visit,” he said placidly, tucking the book into his pile. “Everything has been completed to my exact specifications. Inside my coat pocket, please.”
I hesitated for one astonished second, thinking he meant me to pull out the equipment then and there. But the pocket held only a checkered ash-and-rosewood case, eight inches by four by two, expensive and old. I looked at it sorrowfully, resigning myself as I handed it over and he set up the board.
Chess is the classic strategy game: two sides do battle with a collection of pieces able to move in preordained fashions. Each side is equal in theory, save that one must go first, but in practice the players are never equal, and one must always lose.
I never was one for turn-based games. Why would I sit there, twiddling my thumbs while my opponent attacked me? While white is en
dlessly contemplating whether to move his bishop or his castle, I’ll move my troops to surround him and pick off the king from behind. And where are my archers? An arrow could definitely curve over that single row of pawns, and problem solved.
But maybe I only think that way because I’m no good at the game.
“I do not like it either,” my boss told me, “but it is essential to understand nevertheless. A good chess player uses tactics at two levels: the level of individual moves and the level of the whole game. Computers can mimic this, to an extent. A good program can determine which move is technically best in any specific situation and make that move. A very good program can calculate the probability of its opponent’s follow-up move.
“But a good chess player can predict even further, can understand his opponent’s psychology beyond the constraints of probability. Most chess players have favorite opening moves and use them—or variations on them—over and over. If you play enough, you see patterns not only in the moves your opponent uses, but the sorts of moves he uses. Once you understand how he likes to combine and respond to moves, you will be able to predict, even before the game begins, exactly how your opponent will perform and exactly which moves you will require. If you predict thoroughly enough, you can even instruct someone else on which moves to make in which order, allowing them to win the game without you being present—or them understanding what they are doing.”
I nodded. “Which is why it’s tactically idiotic to follow your opponent’s rules, if you know your opponent can calculate like that.”
“Everyone follows rules, Mercedes.”
“Precisely why I’d rather not. If my choice is between using my opponent’s tactics or winging it, I’d rather wing it.”
“Then you would lose,” my boss said, and emphasized his point by boxing in my king. “Proper strategy makes work lighter, not heavier. Working within preset guidelines allows you to cheat time limitations. Not only will you have fewer permutations to compute in situ—”
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