Translation: I wasn’t invited. I grinned over at him anyway. “I’d certainly hate to go in and interrupt all that important bidding on marvelous works of art, ugly antiques, and future horror movie props,” I told him. “I don’t mind waiting in the car. Maybe I’ll find a really sketchy talk show to listen to. I never get to, when you’re in the car.”
“I am meeting with a seidkonur.”
I shot my boss a glance of pure astonishment, got honked at, and had to concentrate on traffic for several blocks. Then I went back to being shocked.
I’d honestly not expected any explanation from my boss. Like I said, he keeps himself to himself, and I’ve never gotten out of him so much as whether he had a childhood pet. And if I had expected an answer, if I had been angling for one instead of just filling the silence with nonsense—well, this wouldn’t have been it.
A seidkonur, by the way, is a woman—nearly always a woman—who practices divination. Seidr,[*] if you want to get technical. They’re . . . I guess you could call them traditional. Superstition claims they can find hidden things, bring good or bad luck, control the weather, and predict and manipulate the future. If you don’t mind the Old Testament injunction against divination, and if you were born yesterday, I guess you might go to one for help.
There is exactly zero chance my boss did not know all this, which made the situation weirder. It explained his behavior, though: respectable, sensible men who wear suits and shine their shoes and get chauffeured around in black luxury cars do not go to see seidkonurs. And my boss was about as respectable and sensible as they got.
“I met a seidkonur once,” I commented, dropping into the left lane to let an aggressive tailgater pass. “At a fair when I was a teenager. She offered to tell my fortune and give me hot tips for snagging the boy of my dreams.”
“You mean you met a charlatan,” my boss corrected.
“Well . . . yes.”
“I would not go to a charlatan.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to punish my boss’s compulsive confidence, but I couldn’t agree with him. Here’s the thing: my boss is brilliant. I mean, really, seriously brilliant. I hadn’t been lying to Avior about that. My boss is the best cryptanalyst we have—I’ve heard some of the others admit it, my own judgment aside. He absorbs knowledge like no one’s business, and I’ve never caught him forgetting anything. His brain is basically a supercomputer, except that none of our supercomputers have anywhere near his flexibility nor, when it comes to ciphers, his creative problem solving ability. His brain is amazing, and I esteem it more than I can say.
But he can also be an absolute idiot when it comes to people. I mean, he fell for my doe-eyed vulnerability routine. He honestly believes the persona I present to him of a sweet, eager, butter-wouldn’t-melt admirer. (Which is exactly my preference. I don’t think he’d like me much, if he knew the sorts of things that actually go on inside my head.)
“You disapprove?” he asked, and I realized this was the reason he’d told me where we were going: he wanted reassurance.
“I’m definitely surprised,” I said, “but you know I trust your judgment.”
He didn’t answer. I wondered if I’d offended him, but I couldn’t think of what else to say. Being supportive is all well and good, but I wouldn’t be doing him any favors by encouraging him to make a fool of himself. So we rode in silence for another ten minutes until he said, “On your left. Park here.”
I pulled into the auction house parking lot and slid my boss’s sleek car into the spot I judged safest. For the car, I mean. It was a nice car.
“Handsome building,” I said, leaning on the wheel to get a good look. The auction house was two stories of alternating crimson brick and dark, reflective windows. A glass dome topped the building. It must’ve sent their heating bill through the roof, but I’d bet it was a great place to stargaze. “I haven’t seen it before, though I’ve definitely been in this part of town. Is it new?”
“Thank you for driving me,” my boss said, withdrawn and stiff. I’d definitely foot-in-mouthed. “You may take the car.”
“Sort of misses the point of me driving you,” I pointed out. “I said I didn’t mind waiting. Talk shows—”
“Mercedes,” my boss said, making eye contact for the first time that evening. “This is non-negotiable. Go home.”
Well, drat. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Have a pleasant evening.”
Silvertip’s street pattern is about as simple as a polyalphabetic substitution cipher with three levels of transposition. There’s constantly road construction at the taxpayers’ expense to “improve” the maze, which just goes to show that politicians use a different dictionary from the rest of us.
Luc and I moved to Silvertip three years ago, at Francis’s behest. I’d completed my degree and was hunting for a job that didn’t involve teaching or flipping crêpes, and Luc’s home business had taken off enough that he could afford to move out of our parents’ house. Funny how, for all of us, our primary goal had been to get away from Batata Prefecture.
After moving, one of the very first things I learned about life in Silvertip City was the necessity of a GPS. My pride rebelled, but constantly getting lost and being late for job interviews is terrific for quashing pride. It’s not like I was even driving most places: after Francis got tired of my borrowing his truck, I was taking the bus most of the way and then getting lost walking the last few blocks. We’re talking pathetic here.
Or not so much, considering Silvertip. You see, Silvertip has straight roads that you think ought to be curved and curved roads that ought to be straight. One-way streets abruptly go one way the opposite direction or become two way and then end at concrete pillars. Beyond anything, Silvertip is in love with circles. They call themselves boulevards, lanes, streets, drives, and roads, but they’re lying. They’re circles. Except when a circle would be particularly convenient.
I’m explaining all this to make it perfectly clear that what happened next was not my fault. I did everything right. I set the car’s GPS, and I obeyed it. I noted familiar landmarks. I glimpsed Al’s newsstand and knew that I was one block from the parking garage. The parking garage itself was actually within eyeshot when my two-way street turned one way, the wrong way, and forced me into a detour.
The GPS did not yell at me, but I detected snideness in its suggestion to turn around when possible.
I didn’t lose my temper at it. That was another thing Silvertip had taught me: the GPS doesn’t care.
“Recalculating,” it announced. “In five-point-three miles, take your second right.”
Good thing I’d started out with a full tank of gas. I turned right after five-point-three miles, took my third left, and circled three roundabouts.
“Arriving in fifty yards,” the GPS informed me. “Destination on the left.”
No way was I fifty yards from the parking garage. We weren’t anywhere near the right part of town—this seemed to be a warehouse district near the docks. I expected that if I rolled down the window, I’d be able to smell the Gyllan River.
“You have reached your destination,” the GPS informed me.
I slowed and pulled over . . . across the street from the bricks and mirrored windows of the auction house. “Don’t tempt me,” I muttered at the glass dome glinting mysteriously in the streaks of red and gold sky.
Had my boss really gone to consult a seidkonur? The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it sounded. But he had been uncomfortable, so the story he told me fit. Besides—what would he find so embarrassing that he’d think a seidkonur the less shameful story? And why had he felt compelled to tell me anything instead of maintaining his usual closed lips?
I grabbed the GPS and poked at it to stop myself from giving in to my desire to march inside the auction house and find out what was going on. I figured the GPS had gotten confused when I’d missed my original destination—thank you, Silvertip—and so had redirected me back here. “Dear confused, sorry GPS,” I said to it, �
��we’re going to attempt a different route. Try not to bring me back here, or you’re going to be demoted.”
As it calculated, I pulled back out. Traffic had vanished at some point—I guess everyone who worked around here had already headed home—so I had enough concentration to do as I had threatened and search the radio for a talk show.
“—honey, if you know your boyfriend’s unfaithful—”
“—God’s unending love in your life—”
“—have to make an example of them. If Vela believes—”
This street . . . wasn’t right. I pulled over again and took a good look at the GPS map, but it still said the correct destination. I had asked it for a detour, I supposed, and if it was compensating for traffic, this might really be the fastest route. Certainly, the roads were abandoned enough.
Suspicious but willing to play along, I kept following the GPS’s directions. Left, right, ahead, keep—
“Oh, come on,” I complained as we arrived back in front of the auction house. “I warned you!”
Once again, what happened next was not my fault. I did everything right. I used my phone’s GPS app and set the address for the parking garage. But once again, I ended up back at the auction house.
By this point, I was far too frustrated for talk shows and had turned to Japanese metal and then given up on the radio entirely—and things only got worse. They went like this:
I set the address for my home, in case the parking garage was just too tricky, and ended up back at the auction house. I set the car and phone GPSes simultaneously for Tey Prefecture, and ended up back at the auction house. I decided to rely on my imperfect memory of how we’d arrived, and ended up back at the auction house. I employed maze theory and tried taking every right turn (and ended up on a one-way street dead end, which caused some illegal maneuvering to escape), every left turn (and ended up in an endless series of concentric circles leading nowhere), and every other left-right turn (and nearly drove into the river). I tried taking the opposite turn of whatever the GPSes, in extremely improbable and unnerving synchrony, told me to do.
“Turn around when possible,” they insisted. “Destination ahead. Turn around when possible. Destination on your right.”
In the end, I pulled back into the auction house parking lot. It was nearly seven-thirty by that point, and the sun touched the horizon, sending brilliant rays across the sky in its swan song. All around, the streets were barren and the warehouses dark, but this parking lot was as I’d left it: half full of cars, motorcycles, and bicycles ranging from the ridiculously overpriced to the disgustingly rusted.
“I,” I said aloud, “am calm, collected, and professional.” I repeated the phrase once or twice more until I almost believed it, and then rang my boss.
The call went directly to voicemail.
Long meeting? Or had he just forgotten to turn his phone back on? Had he already left? Regardless, the only help I was going to get was inside that auction house.
“So you see, I have to go in,” I told the dash, listening to the words to make sure they sounded convincing. “It’s not nosiness: it’s desperation. I need to ask for directions . . . or better yet, drive him back.”
Yes, I had a cast-iron excuse for butting in. So that was one good thing to come out of this whole mess. And maybe—morning dawned on the new idea—maybe he’d be pleased about not having to take a taxi home.
Real pleasure in my boss is a joy to witness, and a rare one. Anyone who meets him can see his obviously impressive points: his cryptologic brilliance, his breadth of knowledge, his impeccable grooming. But it’s the subtler, rarer aspects of him I most appreciate: the delight in his eyes when he hits upon a solution; the arid slice of his humor, too often mistaken for seriousness; the warmth of his honest praise. I’d worked for him for five months before beginning to understand him—and before beginning to perceive that most people never did.
Attempting to explain this to my brothers had been a mistake.
Just in case he turned on his phone, and to bolster my case for disobeying him, I shot him a text explaining the situation before hopping out of the car.
It really is amazing what a difference perspective can make. I practically skipped up the stairs to the dark double doors. I grabbed one heavy metal bar, and tugged.
Noise, smell, and color rushed out at me from a hot mass of humanity. The interior of the auction house was absolutely packed with people, talking or yelling and stinking of sweat, perfume, cigarettes, and a hundred other aromas rendered intolerable by thick atmosphere and overcrowding.
The people were as varied as their odors: rich and poor, young and old, pretty and plain. I heard accents from each of Carina’s nine prefectures as well as from Akter and Vela and perhaps even further afield. Here was as diverse a collection of people as I’d ever encountered, and none of them paid me the least attention. So I stuck out my elbows, planted an unassailable expression across my face, and dug in.
Body heat enveloped me immediately, and I heard snippets of a dozen conversations, most of them about the weather. I elbowed my way further in, and the crowd parted enough for me to get a good look around.
The auction house’s interior designer, with more extravagance than taste, had decked out the lobby in red velvet and gilt. It looked like an opera house: gaudiness and cheapness masquerading as style.
In the dead center of the lobby was a central island desk—a circular structure enclosed by ceiling-high glass and hosting four of what I assumed to be information clerks. All four were handsome, male, black-haired, and wearing a starched white uniform, gold choker, and secretive eyes.
There wasn’t any furniture about, but there were doors: the exterior double doors through which I’d come, double auction-hall doors, bathrooms, and three others with plaques I couldn’t read from this distance and certainly not through the crowd.
I checked around twice for my boss and didn’t see him—not that I expected he’d hang about in a crowd like this. Even under ordinary circumstances, he hates crowds, but this crowd struck me as having a particularly unhealthy atmosphere. Why was everyone out here anyway, instead of in the auction hall?
I shook my head and elbowed my way past a sequined woman and a pajamaed teen to the nearest information clerk. Like most men, this one was a head taller than me despite my power heels. “Hello!” I shouted, pitching my voice to cut through crowd and glass. “I’m looking for someone! He had a meeting!”
The clerk tapped the glass, where someone had taped a schedule of the day’s auctions. Dubious, I read the schedule. It was distinctly lacking in useful information, such as “Jon Nordfeld is behind Door 3,” but it did tell me exactly when I’d need to bid if I wanted an eighteenth-century distressed mirror (the schedule didn’t say what had upset it) or a bottle of wine older than my Akterian grandfather.
“No!” I shouted through the glass. “I’m looking for the meeting room. Meeting room!”
It was no good. The clerk should have worked for the Carinan Security Service, he was so good at not changing his expression. I needed a different tactic—and someone who could actually hear me.
In an instant, I’d dumped my businesslike pose. I curled inward, and looked around with wide eyes, vulnerable and helpless.
It took approximately 1.8 seconds for a man in a tux to come to my rescue. He had gelled silver-fox hair, manicured nails, and the air of an aging film star. “Are you lost?” he asked—or that’s how I read his lips. He bent toward me, all concern and slightly closer than the crowd justified.
“I’m supposed to go to the meeting room,” I explained, neck exposed, eyes blinking through the shadow of my lashes. “But I’ve never been here before.”
“Come with me,” he said, taking my arm. He led me through the crowd, free arm held before us to protect me as I shrank in close. This method was distinctly less effective than my elbows, but I wanted to let him feel useful. We arrived at the door labeled Upper Rooms, which he propelled me through and then shut behi
nd us.
The noise cut off. Not a hundred percent, but close. That was some serious soundproofing there.
“Phew,” I said, smiling up at him. “The fire department would have a fit if it knew about that.”
“It’s not usually this crowded,” he apologized. “They’ll be back in the auction hall soon enough—once the private items have been sold.”
I continued oozing charm. “Then thank you even more for taking the time to help me out. I hope it won’t make you late—but I guess we’d better hurry. The meeting room must be . . . this way?”
I was playing my role, but, aging-actor look or not, the man failed the chivalrous part I’d assigned him. He didn’t budge. His face took on a sly look more suited for a villain as he said, “I’d be happy to take you the rest of the way. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”
I processed this in a blink. Being creepily propositioned by strange men isn’t that unusual for me—it’s just one of the reasons I’m not big on public transport—but the men who try it immediately upon meeting me usually have worse teeth. I’d have to reevaluate my damsel-in-distress signal. “No,” I said.
“Nothing comes without a price,” he informed me, “and I am a reasonable man.”
My fingers crept into my handbag. “Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll find my own way. That reasonable enough for you?”
He reached out to pat my shoulder, and I stepped back sharply, exchanging my scrunched shoulders and tilted head for square-on alpha posing, vulnerability erased. He twitched, but he didn’t give up. “I led you this far,” he said. “You owe me for that, even if you go the rest of the way alone . . . and I wouldn’t advise going alone.”
I removed the pepper spray from my purse, and made sure he saw me thumbing off the safety.
“Hey!” he cried. “Come on, don’t—there’s no need for that. I did you a favor—”
“Out,” I ordered, not raising my voice. “Back to the lobby.”
The man shrank back, feeling for the doorknob. “You wouldn’t really spray me, would you?” he said, attempting a smile.
Bargaining Power Page 5