by Olsen, Lisa
“I can assure you, steps have been taken to make certain nothing like this will happen again.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Jean Pierre Severine muttered under his breath and Corley shot him a look.
“What was that?”
Jean Pierre waved him away with a shake of his head, but I wanted to bring everything out into the open. “No, he’s right. This isn’t an isolated episode. My predecessor, Thomas Lyons was killed on our last visit to Vetis. It’s no longer safe here.”
“Lyons was killed by a hunter, everybody knows that.” Corley spat out, but I met his dark gaze with a steely look of my own.
“You and I both know that’s not true.”
“Oh yes, because you and the hunter were very close as I understand it.” Corley’s eyes narrowed. “The woman befriended a traitor who killed his own kind, that should tell you something right there.”
“Hey, I got him to leave your turf, you should be thanking me. Look, the point is, we don’t know where the axe is going to fall next. We’ve got to nip this in the bud before someone else winds up dead.”
“It seems certain it’s directed at the West, which has nothing to do with us,” the delegate from Thyssa scowled.
“I wouldn’t be too sure. I’ve heard rumblings about attacks on Toulac and Nira’in as well,” I retorted.
“That’s ridiculous. She’s just trying to sew dissent among us for her own political gain.”
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black!” Corley and I had descended into a screaming match and Erik Erlendur, the Elder of Valbjorn pushed himself up to his feet, holding up a hand. A giant of a man, six foot five with a mop of unruly curls, the color of straw, he cut an imposing figure. I also happened to think he was mad as a hatter based on the ten minute conversation I’d had with him that first night about how nobody appreciates a good public whipping anymore.
Erik smiled, his large teeth tarnished, like jagged tombstones crowded together after a plague. I could see his Warden tense beside him, as if afraid to hear what the man might blurt out. “Allow me to say what we’re all thinking,” he began, sticking his thumbs into the tiny slits in his vest that weren’t meant to really be pockets. “This was an assassination plot by the Order, pure and simple.”
All holy hell broke loose, and there was nothing pure or simple about it. The outbursts came so fast, I wasn’t sure who said what.
“That’s preposterous!”
“She was taken below to the Order levels, that supports his claim.”
“That’s because her brother secreted her away.”
“He was part of the plan, he hasn’t been seen since.”
“Bishop doesn’t have a dishonorable bone in his body.”
“If he was involved, why shoot her in plain view of everyone? Why not lure her away?”
“To make it look like an accident?”
“That’s rubbish. If it was to be an accident, then why not attack her out of sight?”
“It was a well executed plan, the humans compelled to create the right amount of chaos. Only the Order could orchestrate something like that.”
“Oh please, I could arrange a better murder in my sleep.”
“Perhaps murder wasn’t the object? She wasn’t killed, she was taken.”
“Maybe she was only taken because there wasn’t time to lop off her head?”
“I saw her taken. There was a man and a woman. They both wore boots.”
“Plenty of people here wear boots, didn’t you see anything useful?”
“Not like these, they were combat boots like the Order wears.”
“Why would the Order try to kill her?”
“Are you daft, man? Haven’t you heard of her politics? It was definitely the Order who had something to gain in removing Miss Gudrun from office.” It was enough to make my head spin. The last was said by Faust, who’d leapt to his feet as soon as the lively debate started.
“I don’t know who it was who came after me, but I think I for one am leery about making any other agreements until we know for sure who was behind it,” I pointed out.
“What can we do?” Jean Pierre said. “Even if it was the Order, we have no proof. We have no jurisdiction over the investigation.”
“Who says?” I spoke up, prompting confused looks all around me. “Who says where we do and don’t have jurisdiction?”
“The law,” Corley said dryly.
“Let’s see it,” I insisted. “I’ve never read it, have you?” I turned to the others around the table. “Have you?” Nothing but silence greeted me. “Show me in the law where it says the Order is completely above it. Show me where it says we can’t investigate them if we think they’re implicated in a crime.”
Simon Corley rose to his feet. “Miss Gudrun, you’ve been through a terrible shock. Clearly some time is needed to gather your wits before you start flinging accusations…”
Erlendur cut him off. “No, she’s right. They can’t get away with something like this. They should be made to pay.” His brilliant blue eyes blazed with madness and I looked to his right where his Warden, Niels was doing his best to get the man to sit again.
My hands came up in a supplicating gesture. “I’m not saying they’re to blame. But we should have the right to at least question them about it.”
Corley stepped away from the table. “I won’t be a party to this. If the rest of you want to descend into chaos, you can bloody well do it without me.” He turned on his heel and stalked out. There were a couple of other guys who looked like they wanted to follow, but no one moved out of their seat.
“So what do we do now?” Felippo ventured, after the door clicked shut again, and I decided to take the bull by the horns.
“I think we start with asking the right questions.”
*
It didn’t take long at all to summon Angel, and I was glad to see Bishop appear with her, the better to defend himself against the rumors surrounding my disappearance. Of course it didn’t look all that great for him to show up by her side, but at least he looked like his normal self, not in super-broody mode.
“This update will be brief, I’m very busy at present,” Angel declared loftily, the moment she stepped into the room. I chose to set the tone of the meeting right from the start.
“I think you’re under something of a misconception here. You’re not here to report on your interrogations, you’re here to be interrogated.”
“What?” she balked as Felix rose and held out Corley’s empty chair for her to take a seat. “I have nothing to say. I’m not required to answer any of your questions.”
Bishop touched her lightly on the elbow, then not so lightly as he urged her toward the chair. “Come on, Angel. Tell them what they want to know and you can get back to work.”
“This is ridiculous. I will not be treated like a common criminal.” She looked like she wanted to dig her heels in, but Bishop was stronger. I was glad he was there to help out; no one else would have been able to grab a hold of her without creating an incident, I’m sure.
“Nobody said anything about you being a criminal,” Felix smiled blandly, backing away from the chair as they approached. “We just want to ask you a few simple questions. Where’s the harm in that?”
Guilty conscience much? I could see the panic in her eyes, despite the outward calm she tried to portray, and I knew we had our culprit. “Let me have five minutes alone with her, we’ll have all the answers we need.” I should be able to compel her without too much trouble, and then Bob’s your uncle, as Rob would say.
“Violence is not the answer,” Khalid said gravely, taking my words as a physical threat and I had to give him props for defending a woman from harm, even though I was pretty sure I’d heard him say he thought she was involved in the jumbled discussion earlier.
“I think I can get her to see reason.” I rose from my chair, Rob by my side as I slowly approached her side of the room. “Have a seat, Angel.”
Angel cast a last longing look at the door, but Bishop blocked her way, his arms crossed over his formidable chest. “I don’t have time for this.”
Neither did I. I reached out with my will to send her a push. “Sit!” Obediently she sank into the chair, her eyes trained on me. “The sooner you answer our questions, the sooner we’ll be done with this, but you will answer them. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” she nodded slowly.
Feeling a bit like Wonder Woman with my lasso of truth, I plunged ahead, trying carefully to ask questions that didn’t make it seem like I was compelling her in a room full of my peers. Let them think I was intimidating her the good old fashioned way. “Good. Now, where were you the night of the masque when I was shot? And please keep in mind that we can get to the truth of it from any humans that were compelled.”
“I was on the stage.”
“What were you doing on the stage?”
“I was in costume.”
Man, it was like pulling teeth. “What were you doing up on stage in costume?” She squirmed a little, and I sent a burst of compulsion her way. “Answer me.”
“I played the part of Death.”
A collective gasp went through the room, not so much in surprise of her guilt, but that she’d admit it, more likely.
“So you’re the one who shot me.”
“Yes,” she said simply, squirming again, but she was still under my compulsion to sit.
“Angel…” Bishop’s sharp intake of breath could be heard across the room. “How could you do that to me?”
I tried to ignore the to me in Bishop’s plea, focusing on the bigger issue. “Why?”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
Though I could guess how easily she’d gone along with it. “Whose idea was it then?”
“Simon Corley.”
There was no shortage of murmurs at that announcement, as most of them had been expecting to hear someone higher up in the Order’s echelon of power, but it made perfect sense to me. I already knew they’d been working together to exploit the hunter situation and take Tommy out.
“There’s no proof of that,” Jennike Vendal spoke for the first time that night, her dark eyes trained on me instead of Angel, in the most disconcerting way.
“Why would she lie?” I countered.
“She might be trying to push the blame away from her superiors.”
“There’s no reason to believe a word out of her lying mouth,” Cipriano spat out. “She’s trying to confuse the issue to avoid a harsher penalty.”
“Death is death,” Faust pointed out only to be challenged by Cipriano again.
“It’s not an automatic death sentence, she didn’t actually kill her.”
“But you did kill Tommy, didn’t you?” I redirected the line of questioning back to Angel.
“Yes, also at Corley’s request.”
“Someone go get Corley, he needs to hear this,” Faust said, but nobody moved. “Felippo, you go and get him.”
The swarthy man’s lips pouted at the order. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Have Brody go fetch him, he’s right outside the door,” I suggested. “You’re right, Corley should be here to defend himself.” I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to bring everything out into the open.
“In the meantime, why don’t you tell us who else is involved in this little plan?”
She named three other people, names I’d never heard of, but clearly members of the Order. From Bishop’s reaction, I took it he had no idea to suspect them of anything of the kind.
“Detain them as well,” Faust ordered, and Felippo slipped out to have a word with security again.
The fight had gone out of Angel, and she no longer resisted any of the questions I put to her. She talked freely of Corley’s desire to eliminate me after I rebuffed his offer to purchase Canada. She gave a detailed account of how she’d planned to “keep me on ice” as she put it, rather than killing me outright. As if that made it better. The more she talked, the deeper the scowl set into Bishop’s brow, and I worried I might have to stick a guard between him and his… whatever she was to him.
When Corley arrived, he was met with a room full of grim stares, most of them having convicted him without his saying a single word.
“I understand my honor has been besmirched in my absence,” he said, his head held high.
“It’s been more than besmirched, it’s pretty much been dragged through the mud,” Jennkike replied. “This one’s accusing you of orchestrating not only the attack on Anja, but Tommy’s death as well.”
“That’s preposterous,” he replied nonchalantly, keeping cool as a cucumber. “I had nothing to do with either event.”
“The lady says you did,” Bishop glowered, looking like he wanted nothing more than to tear Corley limb from limb.
“The word of an admitted murderer hardly signifies to me. What proof do you have in making such allegations?”
Angel looked up at him in terror, but was unable to move from her seat. “You ordered me to exploit the hunter situation. To be lax in the investigation until a climate where a murder to your benefit would be achieved.”
“Never happened,” he said simply, paying more attention to adjusting the cufflink at his wrist than to anything Angel had to say. “Again, I ask, where is the proof of this? Did I ever say to you – kill the Elder of the West?”
Angel stared back at him, open mouthed.
“Did he?” I prompted.
“Well… no.”
“Did he ever say kill Thomas Lyons?”
“No.” She hung her head miserably.
“Did he tell you to kill me?”
“No.” Her head snapped up, pleading with Bishop to look at her. “But it was his plan, don’t you see? He never came out and said those words directly, but…”
“Enough.” Corley’s hand came up. “If there is nothing else to be laid against me?” He paused a few seconds, the silence stretching before us as I wracked my brain to come up with anything else that might implicate him. I could hardly say Felix had heard him as much as admit to it over a bug in his office, especially without proof. “Very well, then Angel, I hereby banish you from Vetis lands, etcetera, etcetera. You will leave at once, never to return again. Now, can we leave this behind us and return to business?”
I couldn’t believe how quickly he’d dispelled the animosity toward him in the room, but most of the delegates present seemed wholly ready to move on now that they had someone to blame.
“You don’t have the right to sentence her,” Bishop spoke up, his jaw tight. “She’ll be judged by the Order.”
“I do have the right to banish her from my lands, however,” Corley replied. “Whatever your Order does with her after that is no concern of mine.”
“Fine, I’ll put in a call to Volkov and see how he wants to handle it,” Bishop gave a curt nod. “We’ll have her and the other three escorted off of Vetis lands within the hour. Come on, Angel.” He grabbed her elbow, but she stayed rooted to the chair and I remembered I’d compelled her to sit.
“That’s not good enough for me,” I spoke up, laying my hand on Angel’s shoulder to keep her in place. I wasn’t ready to let her off the hook so easily. “She killed Tommy and almost took me out too, and all you’re going to do is drive her across the border? What kind of a punishment is that?”
“She’ll be judged by the Order, I’ll see to it,” Bishop swore.
“Uh huh, that’s not good enough,” I insisted, keeping her firmly rooted in that chair. “Okay, so lets for a moment assume that Corley had nothing to do with these plots. You plan to turn her over to the same organization who could very well be at the root of them? Should they really be judging one of their own?”
“She makes an adequate point,” Faust concurred. I expected the Italian delegate to object again, but it was Jennike who spoke up next.
“It’s out of our hands. She’s a member of the Order, it’s for them to determine
her fate.”
“I still say she should be held accountable to us. Not just for killing Tommy, but plotting to assassinate a head of House not once, but twice. There has to be a law against this that has nothing to do with Order justice. We have to send a strong message that this kind of action against an Elder won’t be tolerated, or anyone with delusions of grandeur can pick us off one by one and we’ll end up in total anarchy.”
“Challenge her,” Erlendur bellowed, his smile a crooked line across his face. “No law prevents your right to revenge.”
Khalid frowned, his deep voice cutting through the murmur that statement produced. “That’s barbaric. Surely we’ve come farther than this by now.”
Faust considered it for a moment before joining in on the debate. “She has the right to mete out punishment for the killing of her Elder. A life for a life, as long as she’s strong enough to take it. That’s as it always has been.”
“But the Order…” Bishop started to say, and I cut him off.
“Isn’t the boss of me,” I finished. “The Order upholds the law, but there’s no law that says I can’t challenge her to a fight. Angel took direct action against my House. Against me. Her life is forfeit, should I be strong enough to take it.”
I just had to hope I was strong enough to dig myself out of the hole I’d stepped in before it became my grave.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Anja…” I felt Rob’s touch on my elbow, but he didn’t say more in present company. I didn’t look at him. He had to understand my reasons for doing this, I couldn’t let her get away with it and I was convinced that turning her over to the Order was tantamount to sending her on vacation with a slap on the wrist.
“You can’t do this,” Bishop said in a low voice, worry plainly etched across his features.
“You’re not the boss of me either.” I met his gaze squarely until he looked away, afraid I might compel him into supporting it, I guessed.
Jennike leaned forward in her seat, suddenly all kinds of happy. “Corley, it’s your House,” she purred. “What do you say?”
“I’ll allow it,” he replied after a moment’s pause, which I was sure was entirely for show. He had nothing to lose. If I killed Angel, it was to his advantage to have her taken out before we asked the right questions to implicate him. If she killed me, he’d get what he wanted in the first place. “Angel, do you accept the challenge?”