Queen of Nowhere

by Jaine Fenn

  JIO

  (Port Viridian, Tethisyn)

  Everyone has secrets.

  Jio Maht devoted his life to helping other people, especially those with secrets. He had a face and manner that inspired trust; he was one of nature’s born confidants, and helping people gave him considerable satisfaction. Any large corporation needed counsellors like Jio, positioned far enough outside the system to be perceived as neutral and safe. He had an enjoyable career that provided a decent living.

  If only they knew.

  It had begun twenty-eight years ago, when he was first starting out as a vocational stress consultant. Clients sometimes fixated on people in his profession. More rarely, the converse occurred. A good counsellor has the insight to see into a person’s heart and the empathy to not be repelled by what they find there. But there is a risk, however unprofessional it might be, of falling for someone you are trying to save.

  Not that what he had with Merice was exactly love. From the start, it was a very physical relationship. She had been in a junior position back then, but he had recognised her obsessive need to succeed. He remembered being surprised and impressed that someone with such drive also possessed the humility and self-knowledge to seek a counsellor of her own volition. When she had told him about her strange, loveless childhood on a distant anarchic world, he had felt deep and genuine sympathy.

  He had also, from the instant he saw her, wanted to go to bed with her.

  They had moved on to discussing boyfriends, of which she had had many. She freely admitted to valuing her career over interper-sonal relationships. What she really wanted was a man who would get close when the time was right, but otherwise keep his distance.

  Jio tried hard not to start thinking of himself as that man. She was his client, and to take advantage of the trust she put in him was an abuse of power. He saw too many victims of abused power in his work: ThreeCs was like a parent in both good and bad ways.

  After three months of weekly sessions, he started to believe she felt something for him too. Part of him desperately hoped she did, because he was beginning to obsess about her. Part of him hoped he was wrong, because he needed to disentangle himself before something irrevocable happened.

  When something irrevocable did happen, she initiated it. All these years later, the details were both clear as crystal and hazy with nostalgia.

  He had become concerned she was holding something back; when he’d finally coaxed out her secret, she had confessed to falling in love with him. At least, that was how he remembered it. The cause mattered less than the effect: amazing sex, in his consulting room. Such a cliche. Such a transgression.

  Naturally he insisted they could not go on as client and counsellor. She said - and this he did remember perfectly - that she saw no reason why not, given she had no intention of ever sleeping with him outside his office.

  He had been incredulous and appalled. She had been adamant: if he wanted her, those were the terms of the relationship. From the way she had said if, she made it clear from the outset that any other possibility was unthinkable.

  Not that they just had sex. Sometimes Merice wanted to talk.

  That was difficult. Sometimes she wanted to talk about her other lovers: that was almost impossible. He challenged her on this once, confessing how hard he found it to provide objective advice when jealousy impinged. She had pointed to the door and said, ‘Beyond that, you are not mine and I am not yours. Those are the rules.’

  Then she had leaned close, and he’d had no choice other than to agree.

  Merice had been coming to him for about a year when she got her first big promotion. Her workload forced her to reduce her counselling sessions to once every two weeks, then to once a month. Jio did as she said, and lived his life fully; he had various girlfriends, and plenty of friends. His obsession with Merice became firmly compartmentalised, a process he observed with professional interest.

  He had just moved to a larger office when he met Rhenery.

  Initially he had no idea she was the woman he would marry; it took three years, and some agonising, before he decided that his future was with her. He never seriously considered telling her about his occasional lover.

  By the time they married and moved to the large apartment in the heart of Port Viridian that came with his promotion, he only saw Merice every couple of months. Sometimes she cancelled at short notice. He tried to use these disappointments to harden his heart, to purge himself of her. Instead the sessions she missed only made the next meeting more piquant.

  He had been sleeping with Merice for eighteen years when he decided to re-evaluate his life and relationships. Rhenery was having problems, largely as a result of their daughter’s growing pains but also due to the inevitable reassessments that come with middle age. Jio knew that ifhe told his wife about his long-term infidelity, their marriage would be over. He thought long and hard whether he wanted a clean break with Rhenery, or whether his love for her was still strong enough to fight for.

  He decided it was. From this conclusion it followed that he had to get Merice out of his life. The thought of doing so terrified him; he would be bereft, incomplete, without her. Merice was a constant, and she had wormed her way into his soul. He had come to embrace, almost to cherish, the ongoing weakness she represented.

  But he saw his lover only once every few months. Rhenery was his wife.

  It was one of the most difficult things he had ever done. He remembered the sweating palms, the racing heart. When Merice came in, he launched straight into the speech he had considered, revised and rehearsed more times than he could remember. He had uttered about a dozen words when she held up a hand.

  He stopped talking. There was no volition in it, he just shut up.

  It was as though he had forgotten how human speech worked.

  Merice began to laugh, a low, sexy rumble. The most intense flash of lust Jio had ever experienced ignited him. She sashayed across the room. And that was that.

  Afterwards, she raised herself up on one elbow then traced a finger along his collarbone and said, ‘You’re mine. Don’t ever think otherwise.’

  She rarely used endearments, even such disempowering ones, and before he could help himself he said, stupidly, ‘I love you.’

  Merice sighed, the exhalation chill on his cooling flesh. ‘Yes, but that’s not the point.’

  Her refusal to acknowledge his feelings made him angry. From the start she had never used the word ‘love’, and he had tried not to either, because those were the rules. Now he had, and she had dismissed it! Even as his professional mind analysed the games she was playing, the pain made him snap, ‘Then what’s the point?

  Because I meant what I s-what I tried to say earlier. We can’t go on.

  She rolled over, away from him. ‘Of course we can,’ she said laconically. ‘You can’t reject me. I won’t allow it.’

  A new chill settled over him; Merice was rising fast through ThreeCs’ political hierarchy. On a world effectively run by a single company, people like her held considerable power, the power to make or break careers, even lives. ‘Are you talking about blackmail?’ he said, fighting to stop his voice falling to an appalled whisper.

  She laughed. ‘No. Not that.’ She was playing with him, speaking as though he was a child. He refused to rise to it.

  Then he had the weirdest thought: the way she had shut him up, her arrogant manner, even the phenomenal sex: it was almost as though, impossible as it seemed, his mistress was - and he had an urge to smile at the crazy idea - a Sidhe.

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked over to find she had turned to face him again. She lowered her chin onto his shoulder, at the same time reaching down to cup his balls.

  Trying hard to ignore what she was doing he said, “‘Yes” what?’

  ‘What you were thinking,’ she said conversationally, ‘about me.’

  ‘And what was I thinking about you?’ Other than that if she kept doing that he’d lose the ability to speak again.
>
  ‘You were thinking that, impossible as it seems, I am not human, but am one of the semi-mythical race humanity is so very proud of apparently wiping out.’

  ‘Why-‘ He swallowed, managed to get some spit into his mouth, and continued, ‘Why would I be thinking something like that?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’ Although Merice kept parts of herself - too much of herself - locked away, he thought he knew her well enough to have spotted the sort of near-psychotic delusion that led someone to claim they were an alien.

  ‘Totally.’

  Both instinct and training instructed him to humour her, all the while looking for a way back to rationality. But this wasn’t just a client; Merice wasHe went blind. Blind and dumb. He was in utter darkness. His existence was instantly reduced to primal, animal fear.

  He had no idea how much time passed before sensation and rational thought returned. One moment he was in an endless terri-fying nightmare, the next he was back in his office, lying on the rug with his lover. His heart was still thudding madly, but other than the aftermath of the fear response, he was unharmed in body or mind.

  Merice whispered, ‘Most, though not all, of the legends are true.

  Including the one about us being able to kill with a thought.’

  Her words didn’t scare him as much as they should, even though he knew she was speaking the truth. Ridiculous though it was, there was no other explanation. He tried to think through the implications, to work out what would happen now the world had changed for ever. Obviously he could never tell anyone. And he could hardly break things off with her. Beyond that-

  ‘It’ll take a bit of getting used to,’ she said, almost as though he had spoken out loud. Which, he supposed, he might as well have.

  She laid a hand on his chest. ‘But I wouldn’t have started fucking you if I didn’t think you were strong enough.’

  He felt a ridiculous warmth at that, an almost childish joy at having pleased her.

  Merice continued, ‘Actually, when it comes to sex, I’ve been holding back until now. If you’d like to cancel your next appointment I’ll show you a few more’ - She gave a throaty, ironic giggle - ‘legendary tricks.’

  She was being absurdly coy, but all he could think of was that she was giving him a real choice. She would still do that, and he could still refuse.

  As if he would. He made a brief com call, pleading a booking error. In return, Merice was as good as her word. After that, he could never give her up.

  Ten years on, his feelings hadn’t changed. He and Rhenery were still married; he still loved his wife, and they still had sex occasionally. They had a granddaughter now, and she was a joy.

  But in this office, once every few months, he was Merice’s, utterly and without reservation. She was a genuine, impossible fantasy. She had all the power, and knew all his secrets. Which, though they never discussed it, may well include other people’s.

  He was under no illusion about how useful he was to her: he was one of the top counsellors in Port Viridian, perhaps in the whole of the Tethisyn system. All sorts of people confided in him.

  He also knew she could break him - his career, his life, his mind - but that was a spice missing from the lives of most people in his situation, safe and comfortable in a corporate enclave. A surprisingly high number of his clients had problems that came down to just such a lack of danger; in response he sometimes advised taking up deep-dive hunting, jet-skimming or freefall splashdown (with the usual caveats about personal safety). Without Merice, he might have resorted to such extreme hobbies himself.

  This next session was before lunch, to allow them maximum time, and give them the opportunity to get showered and respectable again afterwards. The client before cancelled; he’d considered calling Merice to ask if she wanted to bring her visit forward, but there was no point. He didn’t get to set the schedule.

  Between sessions with Merice he barely thought about her, yet the knowledge of what they did together had come to define him.

  Today, waiting for her, he’d had too much time to think. He had been her lover for half his life, and though his appetite for her remained undiminished, even with modern medicine there would come a time when he might not be able to satisfy her. Unless the Sidhe had a solution for that too.

  Then again, over the last few years they had spent as much time talking as screwing. He would like to think this change reflected a deepening in their relationship, especially as she had finally begun to share some of her problems with him - almost as though he really was her counsellor. But he suspected her change of atti-tude reflected something larger, something that reached beyond ThreeCs. She had intimated as much, even mentioned specific concerns, going so far as to name a few names. She couldn’t be the only member of her race in human-space, and he had no doubt they held power elsewhere too. It was not a thought he liked to dwell on.

  The door chimed. The familiar warm rush lit him up from groin to back-brain. He smiled, and let her in.

  SAFER NOT KNOWING

  Designation: TargetZero

  Human alias: Merice Markeck

  Position: Director of Corporate Strategy, ThreeCs

  Location: Tethisyn

  Vu!nerabilities: None

  Note: Unlike many Sldne in human-space, TargetZero has not made any effort to tone down her striking appearance.

 

  The elation was disconcerting. Bez felt childishly, uncomplicat-edly joyful. Rather than hiding in her cabin, she stayed with Tierce in the starliner’s day lounge. Tierce, eager to celebrate their success, ordered and paid for a stupidly expensive bottle of double-fermented Eiswein. Bez allowed him to pour her a glass, but when the first few sips increased her light-headedness, she put the drink to one side.

  Although they were using one of the lounge’s privacy booths, they initially kept their conversation vague and innocuous. Then, with Gracen reduced to a brown smudge in the observation window behind him, Tierce asked Bez for a copy of the data from the archive. Her instinct was to refuse, but he had after all helped her secure the info. She asked what he intended to do with it.

  ‘Initially, nothing,’ he said, refilling his glass. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the next move is yours, Orzabet.’

  Bez looked around nervously at the use of that name. Without thinking, she whispered, ‘If you aren’t going to stick to the cover ID, then you’d better call me Bez.’

  ‘Bez it is.’ He smiled broadly at her, and took a swig of his drink.

  She felt her face reddening. Why in the name of the screaming void had she told him her real name? That drink must have gone to her head after all. But she could hardly take her words back.

  Tierce lowered his glass. ‘And you should call me Imbarin.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Bez defensively. This conversation was unpleasantly close to one she had had over a year ago with Captain Reen.

  Tierce raised an eyebrow, miming offence, though his voice was light when he said, ‘Because it’s my name.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Amazing though it might seem to you, some of us get by on a single identity.’

  ‘Despite being part of a secret organisation apparently working towards the same aims as me?’

  ‘We employ a different modus operandi.’

  ‘So you keep saying. How does this nameless secret society work, exactly? If we’re to be allies, I need to know more about you - and your group.’

  ‘Much as I’d like to tell you, believe me when I say you’re safer not knowing.’

  Annoyingly, Bez could see his logic: what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her - or, rather, couldn’t hurt his people if she fell into Enemy hands. And any additional info Tierce provided would further entangle her with him. Their goals coincided and they had worked well together, but that was as far as it went. ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘Is that “All right” as in, you’ll let me have a copy of the data?’


  In itself, the existence of more than one copy of the original ID

  records posed no threat. ‘Yes.’ She considered sending the info direct to his headware then changed her mind; she had managed to avoid such close contact with him so far, and wanted to keep it that way. ‘I’ll write a dataspike.’

  ‘Whatever works for you.’

  ‘And I think I’ll get some rest before the transit,’ she said.

  ‘So I’ll have to finish this wine all by myself, then?’

  She stood up. ‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’

  *

  Bez was too hyped to sleep. Instead she lay in her cabin considering what possession of the Sidhe ID data would do for her mission. She was no longer accumulating intel: she was planning how to use it. R-Day had gone from an aspiration to an event in the foreseeable future.

  She needed to work out the most efficient way of disseminating this new intel to the right people at the right time. Some previously important avenues of investigation could be dropped, while hitherto minor contacts would need to be developed. Delta contacts would become Betas or Alphas; a number of Alphas would no longer have such a vital role. The changes would mean reconfiguration across her entire hyperweb.

  When the announcement came for passengers to proceed to the stasis room, Bez recorded a com message. She had thought long and hard about this, as it gained her nothing and in the long run would irrevocably fry her current ID.

  The message was for Cusa Foelin, despatched with a delay of two days - long enough for Administrator Valdt’s body to be discovered and for Bez to be far beyond Graceni jurisdiction. It was one line of text - You were right: he killed her. Look in this location - followed by the coordinates of Khea Foelin’s grave. As far as Bez was concerned, once you were gone you were gone, but the Graceni believed that the soul only ascended to ‘heaven’ if the body went through the correct ritual processes. Giving Cusa the chance to indulge her beliefs felt somehow … appropriate.

  She ran into Tierce in the stasis room. He appeared nervous, far more so than during their operations on Gracen. When she looked askance at him he gave a thin smile and said, ‘I hate stasis.’