She was brought back by the sound of a turning engine outside, followed by the slow sandpaper roll of creeping tires as her father’s car came around back. She wondered what those five press vans were doing outside. They dogged her at every turn until the one time they could possibly be of some use, and then they suddenly stick their heads in the sand. She wondered if Qui had something to do with that.
“Come.” Qui said. “We go.”
He let her rise of her own accord, under the sight of his gun. His eyes still upon her, he pulled a coat from the pronged rack by the door, pulled her close to him, and put it around her shoulders like an old friend, the better to hold his gun upon her and out of sight. They left out the back and walked slowly in tandem down the rear stairway to the idling car below. In the haze from the headlights Sarah could see that one of Qui’s men was in the driver’s seat. Her father sat in the back next to the other.
“Walk slowly. Say nothing.”
At the bottom of the stairs Qui paused when across the street a van turned its lights on.
“Keep moving,” he said.
Sarah took another huddled step and another pair of headlights came on, this from a van she recognized as belonging to that first pushy reporter. Then another set came on, as if illuminating their path. Qui stopped again, puzzled by the lights. There was no movement from the vans. They weren’t even running. Only Walcott’s car was on, idling softly. Other than that, the only sounds were the chirruping of the spring night and the traffic’s distant hiss.
Qui pushed Sarah towards the car again and when a fourth set of lights illuminated them, Xiang and Guo got out of the car and squarely faced the vans across the street with their heads lowered like cornered badgers. Guo pulled Walcott out of the back seat, and at the look of confusion in her father’s eyes, dread sprouted at the base of Sarah’s spine and vined upward. This was no rescue. This was no plan he’d set into motion. And this was not at all like the bullying press corps she’d become accustomed to over the past weeks. This was entirely worse.
“What is this foolishness?” Qui spoke into the light. “Step aside.”
“Sarah, sweetheart,” Walcott said with forced calm. “If anything happens, get down.” He quieted as all of them heard the slow, precise click of leather-soled shoes upon the pavement.
A man walked from behind the vans and stepped into the street. He was bathed in the light and Sarah couldn’t make out any of his features, but she saw that he was a slender man dressed in a trim suit. He spoke with a British accent, and he sounded amused. “Qui, I thought we told you to wait your turn.”
“Sarah, honey,” Walcott said, now frantic. “Get under the car. Now.”
But Sarah was mesmerized as two others stepped up to join the man who Walcott knew was Alex Auldborne. The first had a big, blocky outline, like a dresser drawer. The second was a woman, small and dollish. Walcott knew these two as well: Draden Tate, the striker for Team Grey, and Christina Stoke, the sweeper. Qui knew them as well.
“This has nothing to do with you, Auldborne,” Qui said, his mouth forming awkwardly around the name.
“Ah, but it does. You see, we told you to do a thing, namely to stay away from the Tournament, and you didn’t do that thing.” He spoke like an enthusiastic lifeguard reciting a set of rules outside of a community swimming pool. “We can’t have that, Qui.” He shook his head in the harsh lights.
“You mean that Edward Mazaryk cannot allow it,” Qui said, voice dripping.
“We are of one mind in this,” Auldborne snapped back.
“You follow him.”
Sarah could see Auldborne’s entire body moving with the force of his breathing.
“You must see what he is doing,” Qui continued. “He is using you, and he will rule you soon enough.”
Auldborne’s laugh was thin and sharp. “I see through you, Qui. We refuse to bring you along to the party and suddenly Mazaryk is a mad king!” he shook his head. “No, he’s no king. He is crafting a round table of power. The single greatest consolidation of power in generations!”
“And you run his errands,” Qui accused.
Auldborne was either shaking his head again, or popping his neck. In the glare Sarah couldn’t tell.
“We all have our strengths,” Auldborne said. “Well, most of us, anyway,” he amended, letting it briefly hang in the air. “Eddie is very good at getting people to fear him and to follow him.” He held his hands out wide and Sarah saw for the first time that he carried a long, silver revolver. “I,” he continued, “for whatever reason, am not well liked.” He took on an air of hurt pride and pressed his free hand daintily to his chest, but Sarah sensed the toothy smile behind it. “Aside from my two associates here, I’m not good at getting anyone to follow me, I’ll admit it.”
Then his tone darkened. His voice dropped, and Sarah’s skin prickled.
“But the fear part I’ve got in spades,” he said. “For instance, your man there. See how he is standing?”
Qui turned to his sweeper, Guo, who held Walcott close. There was a flash in the night, a crack of gunfire, and suddenly his sweeper was on one knee. Lights came on in the apartments around them and somewhere nearby a dog started barking wildly. Guo let out a groan.
“Now he is not standing!” Auldborne said with flourish. “Did you see that? I did that. Just now. That is what I can do.”
Qui went wide-eyed, affront and disbelief clashing within him. “What are you doing? The world will see!”
“Oh, I know. I’ve assured it, actually.”
Sarah saw her harassing reporter step out of one of the vans along with a cameraman, already filming. Others stepped from their cars and vans as well, from all of them, and Sarah guessed they were responding to a cue from Auldborne. At first they were tentative. Some shook, unsure of what they were a part of, but the scoop proved too enticing. They surrounded them in a loose half-circle.
Xiang, the striker, wasted no time. He switched up his stance and pulled his handgun up to fire, but Auldborne was faster here, too, and again on target. Xiang’s gun hand snapped back towards his face in another flash of gunfire, and then, just as succinctly, Auldborne switched tack and aimed at Guo again, clipping him at the other knee in an instant with the ease of a master gardener pruning a hedge. With nothing left to support him, Guo fell to the street.
“Quite painful, isn’t it? Even without the formula you so desperately want. Now perhaps you’ll see that I’m really doing you a favor? That we withhold the Tournament from you because you are not worthy. Running around behind our backs only proves your weakness. In time you might have found a place at the table, there are a billion of you after all, but this tricky nonsense doesn’t help your cause.” Auldborne’s words dissolved into generous laughter. At a nod from him, Draden Tate lumbered evenly over to where Xiang still held his stinging gun hand. He looked down upon him, his thick dreadlocks pouring over his brow and past his downturned mouth, as if he was frowning at a broken punching bag. His eyes glinted cold behind his ropes of hair as he grabbed Xiang with one hand and popped him in the temple with the other. Xiang collapsed in his hands but Tate eased him to the floor gently.
Qui gave up on Sarah entirely, throwing her to the side to free his gun. He tried to sight upon Tate, but the doll shadow that was Christina Stoke shifted faster, like a woman behind a wall of water. She gave a small shout of admonishment and shot him square in the head. He fell forward to the ground, but because he didn’t have the formula and because he’d been trained to manage pain he was still conscious for several seconds. He was amazed at the power of the pain, and thought this must be what cattle go through when they are knocked senseless with a center punch before being trussed up for slaughter. He contemplated Sarah, who rolled under the car, holding a scream within her. He fought to stay conscious for what seemed an interminable amount of time, but he knew when his body had passed the threshold, and he let himself slip under.
Auldborne dropped his gun to his side, disappointed.<
br />
“What the hell was that for?” he asked Stoke. “I wasn’t finished lording over them. For the cameras, you see?”
“They got the point,” Stoke said, her voice high and sharp, like notes struck on a violin. “And I was getting bored.”
Tate only shook his head at his captain, but a half smile played at his lips.
Auldborne held his hands out as if to ask What am I to do with these unruly children of mine? He heard sirens in the distance. He walked up to Baxter Walcott, who had bunched up to the door of his Subaru like a grunt soldier under his first hail of fire.
“You. Doctor. I’d just as soon shoot you too for going along with them. If you ever do anything like this again without our approval first, I will.”
As he stepped fully out of the harsh relief of the high-beams, Sarah could see him for the first time, and it made her catch her breath. She was horrified to find that she had to fight down a feeling of attraction. She’d been told before that she had bad taste in men, and she believed it now, after Northern, but still; Auldborne wore his tailored gray suit like an extension of his skin. She might have called him beautiful, until he looked at her and she saw the unchecked cruelty that seeped from him as clearly as steam on a cold morning. She dropped her eyes immediately, but it was too late.
“Oh, look everyone,” he said, calling out to his team and the cameras and the night in general. “It’s the girl who fucked John Northern right before he died.”
Sarah burned. She dared not look at her father now. That creeping loneliness returned, here, on the concrete, with the eyes of the world upon her.
“How was he?” Auldborne asked wryly. “Half dead?” He laughed, then Christina laughed. “I really ought to thank you,” he added. “See, because of you and your being a slut and all, his other bitch, that Hix girl? You know her? Well she felt jealous and he felt like he had to patch things up. You should have seen them on the dock holding on to each other.” He spat, disgusted. “And after all that, they both ended up dead anyway!”
Sarah felt tears well hot in her eyes and then fall coldly down her cheeks. She stared at the ground.
Then her father spoke loudly, clearly, for all to hear. “You shut your goddamn mouth, Alex, you mincing pig bastard. From what I hear, she’s the only one on this street that was actually able to take Northern down.”
Auldborne snapped to face Walcott. “Your time will come, doctor. Soon we’ll have no need of your kind, either. We will give or withhold the formula ourselves, as we choose. And when that time comes, I’m going to put you down, after your daughter, so you can see what I do to her.” His voice became crystalline. His eyes darkened to pits. Any further words Baxter may have had froze in his throat.
Then with a slight movement of his head he called Tate and Stoke to him and the three walked away, beyond the vans, through the flashing lights to a dark car behind them. Then they were gone. Much of the press packed up and followed them.
Walcott could do nothing for the Chinese men save check that they were all still breathing. Guo, the man who had been holding him fast, groaned again, still conscious, but his legs were dead weights. Xiang and Qui both breathed as well, albeit lightly. The remaining press began to move in.
“C’mon, honey,” Walcott said. “In the car.”
Sarah wiped her eyes and rose from the street an inch at a time. She sat in the passenger’s side as Walcott closed the driver’s side door behind him. He backed out, slowly, allowing the crowd to move, then cut down side streets and chanced taking a one-way alley the wrong way to lose a press van. Shifting out onto the highway, they were alone. After a moment, he put his hand on Sarah’s knee.
“I love you, you know,” he said.
“Dad,” she began, but started to cry. “I’m so sorry...”
He turned to her. “You have nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart. You drew a bad hand, that’s all. But you’re okay. We’re both okay.”
She quieted, but still cried, the only sign of it an occasional, soft hitching of her breath as she stared out of the window into the night. Walcott took her hand and held it loosely in his own as they drove home.
Chapter Thirteen
A CROWD FANNED OUT in front of Ellie as she stood alongside Tom and Cy a step away from the international platform at Gare du Nord station in Paris. The train hummed behind her and the flashbulbs clicked and popped in front of her. She blinked in the electric afterglow. It took her a moment to realize that Yves Noel, the captain of Silver, had offered her a hand down from the train.
“If you don’t reach for your guns, then we won’t,” he said, his hand still proffered. Ellie accepted it and stepped down in the midst of the Noel triplets. “I am Yves.” He was handsome, in a roguish way. All three of them were. They were of the same height and had the same fine brown hair, but each wore it differently. Yves’s hair was long, slicked back to his head, and he had glittering brown eyes that struck Ellie as vaguely malicious. “These are my brothers,” he said, “Tristan and Dominique. No doubt you already know this.” His English was barely touched by a whispering French accent.
Dominique stared openly at her with a voluminous smile he kept even as he chewed gum. Aviator sunglasses perched up on his head helped keep his hair at bay, albeit in a jumbled mess. His arms were crossed over his chest. Tristan was less brazen and clasped his hands easily in front of him as he regarded them obliquely. Ellie noted a long, thin scar leading down from his temple, a shadow of her own, but there nonetheless. He saw her looking and thumbed it and Ellie looked away.
“I’m Ellie Willmore,” she said, drawing herself up, conscious of the audience on all sides that remained hushed to catch her every word. “This is Cy Bell, my striker, and Tom Elrey, my sweeper.”
“And why are you here, Ellie Willmore?” Yves asked.
“I need your help.” This caught the triplets off guard. Each shifted their weight as they stood watching. Ellie felt that they expected a different approach.
Yves let out a puff of breath. “Come. Walk with us.”
As the six of them walked, Yves and Ellie at the lead, the crowd moved for and with them. A current of excitement flowed among them but it was tempered, less frantic than anything the Americans had encountered before, even back home in Cheyenne. The triplets walked with an easy pace that Ellie found herself having to slow for. She marveled at how calm they were when surrounded by such attention, hardly even acknowledging the lenses trained on them, whereas her own team shied away. Cy simmered underneath his hood, and even Tom eyed the shifting throng warily, as if they were seconds from boiling over.
“Why aren’t they pressing us?” Tom asked Dominique. “Are they always this accommodating?”
“Not always. At first it was...” he searched for the right word, sucking at his teeth in thought.
“—Crushing,” Tristan offered. “We were pawed and grabbed. Like rock stars. But it was too much.”
“So what did you do?” Tom asked.
“We let them touch us,” Dominique grinned. “Everyone. Each person who wanted to.”
“What my brother means,” chimed Yves, not looking back as they walked, “is that one day we simply sat outside in the Place de la Bastille and let everyone come see us.”
“Didn’t they mob you?” Ellie asked.
“At first. But we stayed. We talked. We held babies and shook hands and signed many things. We kissed many girls and some men,” he added, laughing. “For sixteen hours we did this that day.”
“And then again, the next day,” said Tristan.
“And again,” said Dominique.
“For many weeks we did this, and after a few days it took less time, and less, and less. Now this,” Yves concluded, gesturing at the crowd. He stopped to sign a postcard that a young girl held out, calling his name politely. Afterwards he shook the hand of the grandfather accompanying her, kissing him twice on the cheeks. Tom gaped, and when they noticed his attention they withdrew quickly into the crowd again.
They turned down the Boulevard de Magenta and walked between a long line of newly budding trees in the early spring moonlight. They could still see their breath, though barely.
“This is more than the usual number, of course,” Yves said. “Because of you.”
More children pawed their way forward to see the Noels but froze when Ellie looked at them, torn. They backed away.
“They are afraid,” said Yves.
“Of us? Why?”
“Because you are our enemies,” Dominique chirped, still smiling.
“Not right now we’re not,” Ellie said.
“They don’t know that,” said Yves, walking again. “They wait to see how I will act. If I will give you my blessing.”
“And will you?”
“We shall see. Come.”
They moved under moonlight, the French forming a vanguard in the front, and the Americans walking between them. They were never unduly pestered. Because the triplets stopped frequently for photographs and smiled and waved when cheers of Vive La France! drifted their way, the crowd seemed to know that they were to walk unperturbed. The Americans they regarded coolly, especially Cy, who watched all of them from within himself, his hood like the black cowl of an executioner, his face unseen. When his hood swung this way and that, the crowd shied away.
“Their people want to kiss them, ours want to kill us,” Tom muttered to Cy, who nodded slowly.
Eventually they came upon a series of smaller streets facing a long bank that sloped down into a river. Beyond, they saw the lights of the Left Bank twinkle in the cold air. Ellie realized that they had come a good deal south and west from the station, and it had grown late enough to be verging on early. She felt neither tired nor alert; she was walking a middle-ground where there was only a growing sense of pressure, like in an airplane cabin, that compelled her to keep moving. A glance at her teammates showed them much the same.
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