SM Stirling
Page 6
her eyes skipped over his soaked T-shirt, stuck to a sculpted chest—the spillage. Christ, it was awful to watch, though. Or hear. I thought she was going to rip him right open. And she might. Or do it to
me, anytime. I
need this drink. “Lucy is really a job description,” David said. “You’re a
lucy. It’s not even gender-specific, in English.” “Una lucy
,” Theresa amplified. “O un lucy
.” “We’re
renfields,” he finished. “You?” Theresa said, with a half-scornful smile. She put out a hand palm-down, and waggled it back and forth. “Masumenos
. Now I
am a renfield for the Brézé familia
, like my parents and grandparents before me. You were a lucy to start with, and half one even now.” “As if you’ve never been bled,” David snorted. “Not since I was a girl, as initiation. And I did not like
it as you do, putito
. I endured it. A good manager who can handle IT systems as well as I is much harder to find than someone who can only scream and bleed. Or twitch and moan.” “Lucy? Renfield?” Ellen asked, bewildered. “An old joke,” the woman in the business suit said. “From the time of my grandfather. A joke so old it has become merely the way we speak among ourselves. We renfields are those who serve the Shadowspawn, knowing what they are. A lucy is . . . you are . . . food and amusement for them.” Well,
thank you!
Ellen thought. Bitch! “Though one may become the other.” Ellen took a sip of her drink. The vodka beneath the tomato juice added to the wine from dinner to make her feel . . . Dutchly brave? But I have to learn whatever I can. My life depends on it. I’ve got to stay alive until Adrian comes for me. I can’t die like this. I can’t! “How is it, being a renfield?” she asked, trying for cool nonchalance. “As a job. I can see it might be an improvement on what I’m pulling now.” The two laughed again, but with a little more respect. “It’s a little like working for the Mafia,” David said. “The money’s very good, but you can’t quit.” “And a little like selling your soul to the Devil,” Theresa amplified. “Half and half, perhaps. There is no God, and no Devil . . . but there are devils, and we serve them.” “The health package is really
good,” David said; he had a neutral Californian accent. “Full coverage?” Theresa smiled; there was something about it that made Ellen feel a little uneasy. “Mostly, you just do not become sick. They lay their hands upon you, as saints were said to do. My grandparents lived past a hundred years.” Both the others snickered; Ellen had an uneasy sense that they were thinking of her
life expectancy. “So you get a long life. Unless they kill you first,” she said, testing. That brought shrugs. “Lucy, they can kill anyone anytime,” David said. “Where do you think missing persons go? Or those faces on milk cartons? Besides, in any job, sometimes the boss goes for your throat.” Theresa nodded. “We have only one Shadowspawn to fear, one who has a use for us
. The cattle would fear them all . . . if they knew. Perhaps someday they will; and we their faithful servants will be masters over the herd. We
know the truth.” Us and we not including
me,
Ellen thought. I don’t think empathy is high on the list of renfield qualities. “They’re very territorial about poaching on their preserves,” David amplified. “And you don’t have to worry about taxes, police, any of that. As long as you’re off the reservation, don’t piss off the boss or do the sort of big showy shit that’s difficult to make vanish, it’s pretty well anything goes.” “Sounds like a good gig,” Ellen said. If you’re completely fucking
crazy,
she added to herself. And have the morals of a rabid weasel. “There are some things you should know,” Theresa said. David looked at her; she shrugged. “I am
household manager,” she said. To Ellen: “There is no privacy from them, not even in your thoughts. And no safety or protection from them anywhere. Once they have tasted of your blood you are linked, linked forever. They can find you if you flee to the ends of the earth and hide in the deepest cave. And whatever they do to you, even a very painful death, embrace it rather than disobey.” David smirked and glanced at the older woman. “There’s one other downside to being a renfield,” he said. “Your colleagues are going to be the sort of people who are cool with joining the Mafia, or selling their souls to the Devil.” He levered himself up. “Going to go hit the bunk. We’ll be home in an hour and a half. Thanks for the chicken soup. Man, I’m looking forward to my own bed!” Adrienne came out of the bathroom a minute after he’d wobbled to the rear. Her hair was damp, slicked back in a ponytail, and she wore a long loose colorful West African m’boubou robe with wide sleeves, printed in what Ellen thought of as a dashiki pattern. She and Adrian even
walk a lot alike, allowing for the difference in the hips,
Ellen thought. That flowing dancer’s grace was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place. Oh, God, Adrian, come get me! And I hate waiting for someone to
rescue me, but what else can I do? Though the walk had an unpleasantly catlike quality to it, now that she thought of it. A sense of creeping menace came with Adrian’s sister, a fear that she hadn’t noticed until it returned. “Five minutes to the Seversk call, Ms. Brézé,” Theresa said. “Do you want me to cancel it?” “No, no, it’s important. Hmmm. There’s an idea. He makes a great noise about his progressive attitudes but is
fond of high Shadowspawn attitude . . . A pity David isn’t photogenic right now.” She looked at Ellen. “Take off your clothes.” “What?” Ellen said. Then an involuntary yelp of: “Ouch!
” as her neck twinged. “That wasn’t a request, chérie
. This is business. The underwear too. My, that dress is quite ruined, isn’t it?” She tousled Ellen’s pale-blond hair, studied the results and nodded. “Theresa, your pendant for a little.” The manager compressed her lips, but reached behind her head. The slim gold chain held a disk with the same black sun and golden trident that she’d noticed on David’s wrist. Adrienne dropped it over Ellen’s head, and gave it a twitch so that the sigil was visible just above her breasts. “Excellent,” she said. “Now, I will be talking with an associate named Dmitri Usov. He’s an able man but has some quirks. Ah, well, don’t we all, eh? Don’t speak unless spoken to; if he does speak to you, answer him quickly. Theresa, bring coffee and brandy. Ellen, stand by my chair within the pickup angle and serve them if I move my hand, so
.” The chair was a deep lounger. Adrienne lay back in it and touched a clearpad control surface in one arm. A sixty-inch screen swung down from the ceiling with a very faint whir of servos, and lit. After a moment it cleared with the pellucidly sharp outlines that meant a high-bandwidth dedicated satellite link. Ellen blinked. The room that showed in it looked like a set from a Bakst ballet, with samovars and Persian rugs and colorful drapes and icons, clashing horribly with a tumble of electronic equipment. A man in an open embroidered caftan and loose drawstring pantaloons sat on a chair that wasn’t quite thronelike—it looked too comfortable—but came close. Two naked teenagers stood on either side; the boy holding a tray with small glasses, a bowl of caviar and strips of toast, the girl the mouthpiece of a water-pipe. They looked Asian, with the extremely high cheekbones, ruddy skin and flat faces found from Mongolia northward. The man was quite different, sharp-featured, with long pale hair and gray eyes and a thin pointed nose, his torso lean but the muscles sharply defined. What Vladimir Putin wishes he looked like,
Ellen thought. What he’d look like if he were in his thirties and not ugly. She flushed as his eyes slid over her. She’d thought she knew what it was to have a man look at her like a piece of meat. But I didn’t. That’s a flip-her-over-and-fuck-her glance, all right, but it’s
also a
literal piece-of-meat look. Or a bottle-of-good-hooch look. Oh, Jesus this is scary. I wish I could wake up! “Dobry den’, Dmitri Pavlovitch
,”
Adrienne said. “Kak vashi dela?”
in “I’m in fucking Siberia in February, Adrienne Juliyevna,” he said in good English, only about as accented as hers. “It’s cold
, and that is how I am, and to make matters worse I am in fucking Seversk, which is not even the arsehole of Siberia. It is a chancre upon the lower intestine of Siberia. And I am stuck here until the Council relents. Where are you?” “On my jet, bound for California.” She smiled. “Just think how much better it would be if you were in a castle without central heating or plumbing, and I was traveling by coach or rowed by galley slaves, talking to you by telepathy
.” He laughed. “The galley slaves would have their points.” “Not as a means of transportation
.” “Certainly not here! If you spit, it freezes before it hits the ground. Though the long nights have been convenient. I have gotten in some excellent hunting.” “What game?” “Bears by day. Chechens or Tartars by night, mostly. And the odd wandering tourist. Nobody misses them, and they look so surprised. One had but the guidebook said tigers are extinct here
as her last words, I swear to God.” He smiled. “But we are impolite. First we should honor our ancient heritage with the traditional signs.” He made a gesture with his left hand. “Hail to the Dread Empire of Shadows and the Secret Reign that is to come!” Adrienne raised her right hand, divided the first and second fingers from the fourth and fifth to form a V, and solemnly intoned: “Live long and prosper!” Ellen bit back a startled snort. Then they both stuck their index fingers in their ears, waggled the little fingers and chanted: “Uga-Chuga . . . Uga-Chuga . . . Bow! Wow! Wow!” With both fists in the air: “Goooooo TEAM!” Both dissolved in laughter. “Ah, Adrienne, it does me good to speak with you again, after dealing with the Gheorghe Brâncuşi matter for so long. If you knew how many times I had to actually go through those pseudo-medieval rituals, as if I was some legend-besotted Victorian secret-society occultist like our ancestors . . .” “You haven’t had to deal with the Demon Daimyo of the West Coast as long as I have, Dmitri. Any real progress?” “Yes,” he said. “Progress that can be laid before the Council. Let us toast success!” He made another gesture, one that seemed natural; forefinger to thumb, like the sign for OK
, and a finger tapped to the neck. Then he reached for the tray, dipping a strip of the dark toast into the caviar, and taking one of the small glasses. Ellen almost missed Adrienne’s signal. She turned and took the service from Theresa and bent to put it on the sideboard and pour; it had a dark rich aroma, different from anything she’d smelled before. Her flush grew deeper as her full breasts swayed with the gesture; the whole thing made her feel horribly like an extra glimpsed in some obtrusive pop-up ad for an Internet porn site. “Za vashe zdorovye!” He downed the whole glass, Russian-style. “À votre santé
,”
she answered and sipped the cognac, following it with black coffee. “The plutonium was definitely from here,” the man in the screen went on. “The cattle who sold it to the Brotherhood agents thought
they were selling it to the Iranians; I suspect a small, subtle Wreaking on their memories. They have all been dealt with, but the successors . . . I do not know if they will be any better.” Adrienne hissed a little between her teeth. “We really have to do more about this, Dmitri. We are . . . vulnerable.” “Tell me. In my opinion we should never have closed down the Communists, at least their security around closed sites was competent and we only had to control a few key men to control all. That there are so many
to deal with now is why I’ve been trapped here, like some exile in the days of Stalin or the Czars.” His face darkened a little. “As if I
were responsible for Gheorghe’s final death! Have you seen my report on his security? A farce
! Tzigani with knives and shotguns and bandanas around their heads. All that they needed was violins and balalaikas. Maybe their grandfathers were at least formidable savages, but these were merely drunken louts putting on a show, as if for tourists! You expected to see the movie cameras and fog made from dry ice at any moment!” “Yes, one must move with the times,” she said. There was a short significant pause; they met each other’s eyes and then looked away. I missed something there
, Ellen thought. “I use Gurkhas, as you know,” Adrienne said into the brief silence. “They stay bought, too.” “And how was your visit to Santa Fe?” Dmitri went on, taking the mouthpiece of the hookah and drawing a deep bubbling lungful. “You spoke hopefully of it last week.” “
Rather productive.” Another short pause. “In more ways than one.” “Ah, ochen’ horosho
,” he said. Then he looked at Ellen. “Either you are developing a sense of style, Adrienne, or this is some sort of subtle mockery of mine.” “I? Mock? Impossible, Dmitri. Oh, well, possibly a little of both. I acquired her in Santa Fe, yes. Previously my brother’s. Perhaps that explains my desire to show off a little, although he got surprisingly little use out of her. Guilty, I suppose. Such a grubby human emotion, guilt.” “Not just human. Petit bourgeois
, which is worse,” Dmitri said. Then to Ellen: “You are some sort of Slav, girl?” “I . . . Polish, German, some Scots-Irish, a little Cherokee, sir,” Ellen replied. “And she has the most intriguingly complex psyche, too,” Adrienne said. “Childhood trauma, I think. Odd pleasure-pain links.” He replied in Russian, and probably to her
. Ellen searched her memory and managed to produce what she thought was a polite disclaimer of ability to speak the language, learned when they had some clients from St. Petersburg: “Ya poka ne govoryu po russki, Gospodin.
” “I said, You have nice tits, too, to go with the psyche
,” he replied with a smile. What the hell am I supposed to say to
that?
she wondered, feeling her throat lock on the words. Fuck off, you posturing moron? Oh, Christ! I can’t even
think it! Or
bite me, maybe? Adrienne sighed. “Dmitri, your lucies have tits. Or even boobs. Mine have breasts
. Or at least the females do.” “What happened to the Chinese boy with the delectable arse, then?” “Still delectable, useful in several ways, and currently resting after—” Adrienne turned her head and snapped aside just short of Ellen’s thigh, a biting gesture with an audible click
of white sharp teeth. Dmitri snorted. “What a collector you are! Don’t you ever just kill
them, Adrienne? It’s like endless foreplay with no fucking!” Ellen swallowed. She thought the boy holding the tray did too, with an almost imperceptible quiver in his hands. Adrienne sighed again. “Dmitri, Dmitri, what a . . . gourmand you are. I suppose you even like béchamel sauce.” “What’s wrong with it?” “That it makes everything taste the same, Escoffier’s original sin? There’s nothing wrong with agony and death, but you miss out on so much if you hurry, experiencing the direct mental overtones as well as the actual blood. Emotional degradation, despair, self-loathing, transference . . .” He snorted. “Girlie stuff.” “Dmitri, I am
a girl! When I’m corporeal, at least, and most of the time night-walking too.” “Quantity can have a quality all its own, even for drinking emotions. In mass, they can be overwhelmingly potent. Ah, if you had only been at Srebrenica when the massacre began—” “Dmitri, I was a child. Besides, my old, do you realize how many times
you’ve told your Srebrenica story?” “Oh.” He winced. “Tell me I’m not as bad as von Horst with the Hindenber
g.” “Nearly as bad as McFadden with the Titanic
! And he’s transitioned successfully to postcorporeal so he’ll never
shut up. You’d think with a potentially infinite span ahead of him he’d focus on the future sometimes.” They laughed again. Adrienne touched the controls. “I’ll do what I can with Tōkairin Hajime,” Adrienne said. “He has not any dog in this fight, so he may be reasonable. Michiko listens to me, and she has his ear. She’s of our generation. You’ve earned release, Dmitri. There’s definitely going to be a meeting in T
iflis next year, the full Council and all candidate-qualified purebloods. They have to elect a successor to Gheorghe, after all.” “I shall be forever in your debt. And the more so if I can get to Tiflis and a decent climate. We will have to remind Putin of who he really works for, so there are no disturbances.” “Good. There’s talk that they may select a corporeal this time, which would be the first since . . . when? 1932, I think.” “Ah. A younger voice on the Council. That would be . . . progressive
.” “Yes, it would. Possibilities, eh?” The screen died and hummed upward. Adrienne smiled like a lynx. “That went smoothly, very smoothly. Theresa, you’ve earned a visit to Jean-Charles.” Ellen cleared her throat. “Yes, yes, chérie
,” Adrienne said. “Get dressed, and let Theresa have her pendant back. You did very well, putting Dmitri in a good mood. Yes, dangled in front of him like a piece of steak
is one way to put it, and no doubt you’ll feel better with . . . what’s that thought there? Without my ass bare to the breeze?
We’ll be landing soon, anyway.” She smiled and linked her hands behind her head. “Life is good
.”
CHAPTER SIX W
here am I? Ellen Tarnowski looked around. She was sitting in . . . It’s Adrian’s living-room! The great windows showing an endless tumbled stretch of moonlit high desert and mountain, the lights dim, a fire of piñon logs crackling on the fieldstone hearth and scenting the air. Even the faint smell of tobacco she’d found so irritating was comforting enough to make her almost sob with gratitude. And Adrian, standing gravely by the mantelpiece, taut and elegant as a cat. “Oh, thank God!” she burst out. “Adrian, I had the most horrible—” Full wakefulness crashed back. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” He shook his head, the silky hair sliding around his lobeless ears. “I’m afraid not,” he said softly, his face stark with misery. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I am so very sorry.” “Then—” She looked down; she was in a long denim skirt and Indian blouse outfit she remembered. She pinched herself, hard. It hurt, but her surroundings stayed just the same. She had never had a dream like this, not complete with every detail of all five senses. “Where am I?” she said slowly. “Your . . . mind is here.” “Where’s here