The Kinsmen Universe

by Ilona Andrews

  A mental tug interrupted Claire's musings. Venturo Escana, approaching fast. A walking mental firestorm of a mind behind an invisible wall of steel will.

  "All set." Renata raised her hands from the keys. "Did you review the Sangori file?"

  "Yes." Venturo's mind was coming closer.

  "And the recommendations?

  "Yes."

  "Good! Be ready to spit it all back at Ven when he comes by. He has a meeting with them later this afternoon and he prefers the spoken summary. But don't worry, he knows most of the file already. He just needs a refresher course."

  He had a heightened auditory focus - his mind processed sound better than visual cues. Although for most people the theory of learning styles had long been debunked, for psychers it remained true: some were visual learners, some listened, and others had to write every scrap of information down. She'd worked with auditory psychers like that before. There was a trick to it - the combination of the correct intonation, vocabulary, and the information presented in a logical manner.

  Renata's eyes widened. "Speak of the devil."

  Venturo had turned the corner. Claire braced herself and turned to look, slowly.

  The amicable man she saw yesterday was gone. He wore a black shirt that clung to him like paint, focusing attention on every contoured muscle. A fine mesh of hair-thin fibers snaked its way through the fabric, widening into oblong scales on his chest and the larger muscles of his shoulders. He looked as if he wore armor, if armor could be flexible and form-fitting. His eyes were dark, and his mind churned - something occupied his attention. He moved with purpose, striding straight down the hallway with a kind of fierce masculine determination. People moved out of his way.

  "What is he wearing?" Claire murmured.

  "A bionet suit. When psychers log into the net, their bodies don't move at all. A human body isn't designed to be completely immobile unless it floats," Renata said. "The suits start pulsing after a while, exercising the muscles and making sure lymph keeps moving."

  A bionet suit. Claire recalled waking up cramped up after hours in the bionet and wincing as the medic massaged her limbs back into life.

  "Someone's smitten," Renata said.

  Claire glanced at her. "Is it that obvious?"

  "Yes. Very." Renata paused. "Claire, you do know what psychers do, don't you?"

  She needed to give a general answer. "Provide security?"

  "If they catch hackers on the bionet, they kill them." Renata leaned closer. "Venturo's death count is in the dozens. You can't keep doing that sort of work and not be affected."

  You don't say.

  "He looks delicious and golden, but his head is a dark place. He was attacked in front of our building once - four people - and he drove each of them to impale themselves on an iron fence, one by one. You don't need to tangle with that kind of mind. Trust me on this."

  "I understand," Claire said.

  "There is a reason why psychers in Guardian, Inc. aren't permitted to read our minds. Sometimes a two-way connection happens and you see things in their heads. Dark things. He's a kinsman - all they care about is power and influence. Not to mention that nothing serious could ever come from it. Psychers love other psychers. Something about joining of the minds, and all that."

  Venturo saw them. His steps sped up a fraction.

  Renata fell silent.

  Claire looked down at her tablet.

  Venturo stopped by them. "Renata, where is the new hire? The refugee?"

  Claire glanced up. Renata cleared her throat and pointed at Claire with her stylus. Venturo turned. His eyes narrowed.

  For a brief, tiny second the two of them were alone in the universe, and then he nodded. "Love the hair. I need the summary of the Sangori file."

  He turned and stalked into his office.

  Renata jerked her head in the direction of his retreating back and mouthed, "Go."

  Claire smiled inwardly and followed.

  Venturo landed in his chair, his face dark, and leaned back, hands on the arm rest. The door slid shut, sealing them off from the rest of the offices. Claire sat.

  "Sangori File," Claire began, enunciating clearly to let him tag it in his head. "Principals: Savien Sangori, head of the family, sixty-two years old, grey hair, stocky build, tendency to lick his lips when he is nervous."

  "Was this in the file?" he asked.

  "This was in the news footage which I watched this morning. It was recorded when he was interviewed last year in connection with insider trading."

  He nodded. "Continue."

  "Maureen Sangori, wife of Savien, fifty-seven years old, dark hair, lean, combat implant of at least B level. Prefers knives. Quick to anger. Likes the color white: white dress, white flowers, white aerial..."

  It took her about an hour to recite the Sangori file. Sangori Finances, the investment concern with a net worth of one point two billion credits, had grown too large for the common computing solutions. The firm was preparing to switch to the bionet by launching a new incarnation of the management system that allowed their clients instant access to their portfolio. They were in desperate need of a bionet safety solution and Guardian, Inc. was happy to provide them with one.

  Venturo listened with his eyes closed without interruptions. There was always a chance that she had miscalculated, but most psychers perceived and processed the information similarly. She had presented it the way her own mind analyzed it, except she preferred her cues to be visual.

  "End file," she said.

  Venturo opened his eyes.

  A digital screen chimed. "Sangori appointment in twenty minutes, Red Conference Room."

  Ven stood up, went to the door, and paused by Renata's desk. "Take her off routine processing."

  "For how long?" Renata asked.

  "Until further notice." Ven started down the hallway and turned, walking backward. "Come on."

  Claire pointed at herself. "Me?"

  "Who else?"

  She caught up with him. "Where are we going?"

  "To my Sangori appointment. I may need another point of view."

  She hid a grin and followed him into the elevator.

  Chapter Four

  Claire strode down the hallway, her heels clicking lightly on the transparent floor, her tablet in her hand. She wore a pale green dress that set off her hair and her new tan. The day was winding down, and the week with it.

  The hallway brought her to thirty-three twelve, a wide room nicknamed the Wheel. The Wheel consisted of a round common area from which a dozen office rooms branched in a circle. From above it looked like a flower with a circular middle and elongated petals.

  People emerged from the offices at her approach. Hands held out pseudopapers and data strips. She was a link to Ven and everyone wanted to get their bit in before the Friday rolled to a close.

  "Earnings projections for the next twin-week!"

  "What do you want me to do about the Vinogradov case?" Marto asked.

  "He will look at it this afternoon," she replied.

  "What about Hawk Corp.?" Liana asked.

  "Monday." Claire smiled.

  "Here's the Bodia summary."

  When she made it to the lift, her hands were full. No matter how well Venturo treated his employees and how ethical he was in keeping his mind to himself, the non-psychers never could get rid of a nagging suspicion that he might be scanning their thoughts. She'd been on the receiving end of these suspicions before: people who went out of their way to avoid her, never discourteous but always cautious. It made her isolated. Psychers stuck together, because the rest of the world was rarely welcoming.

  Claire turned and watched the sun shine through the solar panels as the elevator moved upward. In the month she had spent as Venturo's assistant, she had managed to become an indispensable link between him and the support staff. They saw her as safe, a buffer between them and Venturo's lethal brain. It was at once so much more than she thought she would achieve and so much less than she was capab
le of.

  The doors whispered open, and she exited the elevator, heading for Venturo's office. It was Friday. The weekend was just around the corner.

  Having two days off after a lifetime of weekends consisting of half-days on Sunday seemed like a decadent luxury. The first three weekends she slept, tried take-out from the neighboring restaurants, and watched broadcasts, soaking up information about the Province of Dahlia like a sponge. She'd finally decided she had enough understanding of the customs and planned to venture to the Terraces this weekend.

  She saw him through the translucent door at the end of the hallway: he stood by his desk, his wide back to her, talking to a digital screen, the line of his shoulders tense. Something unpleasant.

  Things with Venturo had become progressively more complicated. She no longer stared in stunned silence when she saw him, but as they worked together, the facets of his personality became apparent. Venturo had a fierce intellect and a relentless drive to succeed, knitted together by a kind of arrogance evolved from understanding your own power.

  Venturo had definite ideas about how things had to be and he held himself to these strict standards. In the month she had acted as his personal aide, she had seen him furious over a stupid mistake an employee had made, yet when the same employee meekly came to the slaughter, Venturo treated him with tact and flawless politeness. On two occasions, Ven ran around the building, trying to hide from his aunt and an invitation to some family function, until Lienne lost her patience and turned her mind into a glowing beacon of light, mind-scanning the place for him, but in their interactions he would be respectful to her without fail.

  It was this control that drew her in. The more she learned about him, the more she was drawn to him. That and the small, seemingly insignificant things he did for her. He opened the door for her. She had discovered that the drink machine in the Wheel dispensed tea in thirty different flavors, and after a hard day of work, when Ven would make his evening pilgrimage to get himself a coffee, he would bring her a cup of hot tea. He sought her opinion, and he would ask her seemingly random things. Did she have a chance to go to the Botanical Gardens? Has she been to the Terraces?

  He must've been something else on the bionet. She would never know. He would never see her on the bionet either.

  Lucky for her, her ability to control her emotions was never in question. She was never less than professional in their interactions.

  The office door slid open. Claire stepped inside.

  Venturo turned. She read fury in his eyes. His mind churned and broiled. "We're about to lose the Sangori account."

  What? "To whom?" she asked.

  "De Solis Security."

  DSS. Guardian's biggest rival.

  Claire reviewed the facts. Bionet safety consisted of two phases: the establishment and the maintenance. The establishment meant installation of static security mechanisms and structuring the bionet in a way that would lead an intruder into these defenses. The maintenance consisted of responding to active threats. Of the two, the establishment phase was the most costly and the most labor-intensive. Because of the danger involved, the maintenance brought in a larger amount of money but required fewer man-hours.

  Venturo had given the Sangori a very good deal on the establishment to entice them into employing Guardian, Inc. He had been planning to recoup his costs on the maintenance fees.

  The contract had been signed. They'd been working on the establishment phase for the past three weeks and it was completed this morning. Giving it up would mean DSS would reap all of the benefits of their groundwork.

  A clause in the contract gave Sangori legal means to terminate it after the establishment. The clause was standard, but in every meeting with Venturo and Savien, the head of the Sangori family, had asserted his intention to continue with the maintenance phase. He broke his word.

  The anger in Ven's mind told her they had no legal recourse.

  "How much do we stand to lose?" she asked.

  "Two million credits," he said. "It's not the money."

  "I don't understand," she said.

  "Savien Sangori doesn't have the expertise to engineer this scheme on his own. He knows money; he doesn't understand the bionet. This took a psycher, someone who had looked at the amount of work involved and quoted him exact numbers prior to him ever walking into my building. DDS has conspired with him. They must've offered him monthly maintenance at a lower price if he managed to get the establishment out of me. They set us up."

  Now she understood. "It's about pride then."

  He faced her. "Yes. More, it's about business. I've been double-crossed. Suckered like a fool. I provide security. Would you want a gullible fool to protect your data?"

  "A psycher's gullibility has no bearing on the destructive potential of his mind." She almost bit the last word. She shouldn't have said that.

  Ven looked at her, his mind focusing on hers. If he looked too closely, she would be outed.

  "Forgive me," Claire said. "I've been trying to read some research in my spare time. I may have misunderstood."

  He considered it for a long second and let it go.

  "You understand perfectly," he said. "But not many other people do."

  He pulled his doublet off the back of his chair.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To have a conversation with Savien Sangori. I'm going to attempt to explain the facts of life to him."

  "Those facts being?" she asked.

  "I make a dangerous enemy," he said, "and Sangori is an old provincial family. They have never before betrayed the integrity of their family name to make a credit. I'm curious why they decided to start now."

  "What if he refuses to talk to you?"

  "I'm not planning on giving him a chance to decline."

  Alarm dashed through her. She set her pseudopapers in the chair and plucked her tablet out from the bottom of the stack.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "I'm coming with you."

  "Why?"

  "Because you shouldn't go alone."

  He peered at her, incredulous. "And you're planning to come as my bodyguard?"

  "I am."

  It would take her at least three minutes to break through the shell over her mind, bringing her to combat readiness. It would be an eternity in a psycher fight, where death was instant. Still, she couldn't let him go alone and she didn't need to listen to his mind to realize he wouldn't take anyone he considered capable of delivering damage to watch his back. Venturo Escana, arrogant beast that he was, would consider backup beneath him.

  "Just out of purely academic curiosity, how exactly are you planning to defend me?" Ven asked. "You have no weapons, no combat enhancements, and your mind is inert. Are you planning on beating Sangori's assassins off with that tablet or were you thinking of a more theoretical approach? Should I look forward to you giving me a detailed analysis of a knife sticking out of my back? If I happen to die, will you deliver a slide point presentation describing my valor at my funeral?"

  "Are you finished?"

  "Possibly."

  "Very well." She raised her chin. "I'm ready when you are."

  "You do realize that this is foolish?"

  She simply looked at him, loading her gaze with as much scorn and sarcasm as she could manage.

  As they were walking down the hallway, Ven leaned to her. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. I hope you don't get us killed."

  "They wouldn't dare touch you," he said. "You're a noncombatant."

  They stepped into the elevator.

  "Can you kill outside of the bionet?" she asked.

  "If the Sangori are smart, you will never have to find out," he said.

  Ven marched into the lobby of Sangori Investments. Claire followed him, a step behind. Inside, white columns rose up, five stories tall and lit from the inside with a warm yellow light. An ornate lacy relief of vines and flowers sheathed the columns, blocking the illumination, so the spaces between leaves and flow
ers glowed with white. Delicate golden chairs sat in groups by ornate tables, so airy they might have been spun by spiders. People occupying the chairs chatted in quiet voices.

  In the back of the lobby, a reception area waited, flanked by shorter columns that supported white statues of men on some sort of mounts. Bright green silk draped the reception counter, spilling from it in pleated waves.

  She had never seen so much opulence in her entire life.

  Ven strode to the reception area across the polished floor inlaid with a green and gold mosaic. A man with a practiced smile greeted him.

  "Venturo Escana to see Savien Sangori," Ven said. "I'll show myself up."

  Heads turned. Suddenly they were the focus of attention.

  She felt the sharp points of psycher minds approaching from the left, where a gilded elevator slowly descended along the wall. Ven had felt them too, and moved to stand in front of her.

  The elevator doors opened and Castilla de Solis walked out onto the floor. Her mind blazed like a luminescent supernova. In a split second, Claire assessed it. Castilla had power. The question was, did she have the skill to go along with it?

  Behind her two men stepped out, one tall, older, with a square jaw, a walking brick. His mind glowed, not as bright as Castilla's, but strong enough. The man on his left was a leaner, faster, younger version of him, his blue-black hair falling in a long waterfall down his shoulders. His mind rivaled Castilla's, but there was an odd brittle edge to it.

  "Venturo," Castilla's eyes opened wide in mock surprise.

  "Did you enjoy yourself?" Scorn dripped from Venturo's voice.

  The lean psycher's gaze met Claire's. The irises of his eyes were so light, they nearly glowed.

  "Yes. Yes, I did."

  "Was it worth starting a war?"

  "Are we at war, Venturo?" Castilla raised her eyebrows.

  "We are now."

  "Then I'll start with your pretty little drone."

  The lean psycher's mind caught Claire's in a fiery hot grip. Her body locked, her spine bending in an unnatural angle. Her throat constricted, cutting the oxygen flow to a mere trickle, letting in just enough air to retain consciousness. She began to dismantle the shell from within.