The Book of Betrayal

by Melissa McShane

  Jeremiah appeared in the doorway. I’d never seen him wear hunter’s fatigues before and was surprised at how well they suited him. His familiar smile was gone, replaced by a hard, cold expression. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said, his voice matching his expression. “Don’t you know how dangerous I am?”

  “You’re not dangerous,” Viv said. “Jeremiah, let me go.”

  “I don’t think so.” He moved on past the bathroom door and I heard him go into his bedroom. There was a sound like wood moving across wood, and the tinkle of glass. Then a thump, like a trap door closing, and Jeremiah reappeared, tucking something small into his thigh pocket. “Did they send you to appeal to my better nature?”

  “Nobody sent us,” I said. “We were worried about you. That you might have been captured.”

  “I know you’re not a traitor,” Viv said.

  “Oh, I’m a traitor, all right.” Jeremiah smiled, a lopsided, cynical thing that bore no resemblance to his usual brilliant smile. “Or was. Not that it will make a difference.”

  “What are you talking about?” Judy said. She’d been struggling against her living bonds, but had given up and was now regarding Jeremiah coldly.

  “The trees will release you once I’m gone,” Jeremiah said. “Tell Lucia not to bother looking for me. I’m fleeing two sets of people who want me dead, and I don’t intend to let them catch me.”

  “Who else wants you dead?” I said. “Jeremiah, did you break with the traitors?”

  Jeremiah ignored me. His attention was all for Viv, who was crying. “You were the one good thing in my life,” he said, “the one innocent thing. I do love you, Viv, and to prove it, I’m leaving here before they figure out how they can use you against me.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Viv snarled through her tears. “You owe me an explanation, if you’re not just going to duck out of here like a coward.”

  A smile touched his eyes. “I might have known that’s what you’d say,” he said. “I should—” He turned away, shaking his head. The thin branches binding my hands withdrew, and I found myself free and able to step away from the remains of the familiar. “Don’t make the call,” he warned Judy, who had her phone out. “I’ll tell you my sad story, but in exchange for that I’ll have to insist you let me leave. I have no interest in being executed by Lucia’s henchmen.”

  “You think you can make demands?”

  “I think I could have had those branches strangle you. Put the phone away. Now.”

  Judy scowled, but put her phone back in her pocket. “Why don’t you three sit on the couch,” Jeremiah said. “You might as well be comfortable.”

  “Why are you still here?” I said. “You should already be running. You killed too many steel magi for them to let you live.”

  “I wasn’t part of that magic. Wasn’t approached to be part of it, fortunately, because I would have refused and they would have killed me.”

  “So you say. Why didn’t you leave when Lucia’s summons came?”

  “They came for me unexpectedly, while I was destroying my familiar,” Jeremiah said, “and I left behind a couple of essentials I wanted to take with me into exile. If you’d come last night, you’d have run into Lucia’s watchdogs. Good timing all around, eh?”

  “I don’t care about that. I want to know why you’re a traitor.” Viv wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Because it made sense, once upon a time,” Jeremiah said. He paced a tight circle in front of us. “The Wardens are fighting a losing battle. We barely hold our own against the invaders, the small, stupid ones, and we have no chance against the intelligent ones. I met one of the latter one night while I was hunting, and we had a long conversation about what they want from our world. What we can do for each other. And I was convinced.”

  “But they want to treat us like cattle! Kill some of us like…like sacrifices,” I exclaimed.

  “That’s what they say, yes. And I’m ashamed to say I fell for it. Small sacrifices for the lives of all of humanity. It seemed a fair price to pay for everyone else’s freedom.” Jeremiah shook his head. “But it’s not what they want. Once they get us in a subservient position, once we stop fighting, they will slaughter us all and move on to the next world. It’s what they’ve done for millennia. They have no compassion, no kindness, no sense of justice. There is only kill or be killed.”

  It felt as if he’d sucked all the air out of the room. “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “Years of investigation. I know I look like a happy-go-lucky guy, but I don’t trust easily and I certainly don’t trust anyone who claims such naked altruism on the part of someone else’s race. I joined the invaders’ human allies expecting to learn things they weren’t telling us. When I discovered just how much they weren’t telling us, it was too late. They’d already marked me as one of their own.”

  I shot out of my seat. “But, Jeremiah, don’t you see how valuable that makes you? Lucia needs the information you have. You should tell her the truth!”

  “And say what, exactly? I have no way of proving I’ve left the Mercy—such a pleasant name for the enemies of mankind, don’t you think? All I have is a marker in my head that says I’m one of the traitors. Lucia already knows I’m the enemy. My former masters will figure it out soon enough. I’m a dead man unless I flee.”

  “Lucia can protect you. And she doesn’t want to kill anyone if she can help it.”

  Jeremiah’s smile became even more bitter. “She killed her own lover when it turned out he was a traitor. She’ll have no problem killing me.”

  “You should have told her as soon as you decided to break with the…Mercy?” Judy said. “She might have believed you then.”

  “I was afraid she’d just think I was crazy. Besides, it was when the familiars were breaking their bindings, and things were a little busy. I did what I could. I steered the Nicolliens in the right direction to figure out what was wrong with the bindings.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I sacrificed my familiar to study the binding. I would have had to anyway, since my masters could use the familiar to monitor me.”

  “And yet you took another familiar.” Judy’s voice was flat, emotionless.

  “I had to. They were becoming suspicious.” Jeremiah let out a long, deep breath. “That’s about it. I realized I couldn’t belong to an organization that ultimately would allow the destruction of mankind, and I started looking for a way to free myself that didn’t include my death. Then Lucia started rounding up traitors, and my time was up. Now, do I need to tie you up again to keep you from following me, or can you give me your word you’ll let me go?”

  Viv stood. “No.”

  “Viv, I don’t—”

  “No. You’re not leaving. You’re going to tell Lucia what you told us and work to reverse the damage you caused.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can.” She turned to look at Judy and me. “We’ll talk to Lucia first. Explain what we learned. We’ll get her to promise she won’t just kill you out of hand, and then you can arrange a meeting in a safe neutral place, if that’s what you’re worried about. That would make sense, anyway.”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “Nowhere is safe.”

  “Stop talking like you’ve already given up!” Viv shouted. “I love you. I’m not going to watch you throw your life away and go on the run forever when you could actually do something to help the Wardens!”

  “Lucia will never listen to you.”

  “She will. She’s not irrational. I think she would rather have the advantage of your knowledge than see you dead.”

  “I think Viv’s right,” I said. “And Lucia can protect you. Please, Jeremiah.”

  Jeremiah looked at Judy. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  “If I were you, I’d run,” Judy said.

  “Judy!”

  Judy held up a hand to forestall Viv’s next outburst. “But that’s because that’s how I work,” Judy
said. “I’m no fighter. I have to strike from the shadows to protect myself. You’re a front-line fighter and you’re no coward. Go on the run now, and you might live a long life. It’s up to you whether it’s happy or not. But stay and fight, and you might make a difference. Plus, it will make Viv happy, and I think that’s something you want.”

  “Viv’s in danger the moment the Mercy finds out I’ve betrayed them.”

  “Then I’ll have to find a way to protect myself,” Viv said. “I’m not going to be a hostage before anyone’s even tried to hurt me.”

  Jeremiah’s face was a mask of indecision. “I shouldn’t,” he said, and reached out to Viv, who put her arms around him.

  “I have faith in you,” she whispered. “Everything else, we can figure out.”

  Jeremiah sighed and closed his eyes, putting his hand on Viv’s bright magenta hair. “This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Well, it doesn’t come close to the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” I said, “so you’re all right.”

  “Do you have your phone?” Viv asked. Jeremiah shook his head. Viv dug in her pocket for her phone and pressed it on Jeremiah. “We’ll call you when we’ve spoken to Lucia, and you can set up the meeting time and place. In the meantime, do you have someplace safe to go?”

  “Safe enough that I won’t tell you where it is.” Jeremiah kissed her, and Judy and I turned away to give them a little privacy. I could hear them speaking in voices too low to make out, then Viv said, “We’ll go to Lucia right away. Be safe.”

  Jeremiah turned off the light before we left his apartment, and when I looked back, the place looked as empty as it had when we’d arrived. “I hope this is the right thing to do,” Judy said as I drove down the steep driveway.

  “Of course it’s right. Think how much Jeremiah can help Lucia in this fight.” Viv hammered her fists on her thighs, a nervous, erratic movement. “I was so scared!”

  “That’s definitely not what I expected,” Judy said. “I guess we were both right.”

  “Now we just have to convince Lucia,” I said. “That ought to be…”

  “Difficult?” said Viv.

  “Terrifying?” said Judy.

  “A challenge,” I said.

  14

  With Judy’s help, I navigated to the entrance to the Gunther Node. Viv and I stood in the middle of the thorny white circle painted on the floor while Judy spoke into the old-fashioned telephone on the white metal wall. “I’m so excited,” Viv whispered. “I’ve never been here before! Are you sure you won’t be in trouble for bringing me?”

  I eyed Judy, whose conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line was increasingly emphatic. “Either they let you in, or they don’t, and if they let you in, we aren’t in trouble.” Probably. “Viv, how can you be excited when Jeremiah’s life is at stake?”

  The smile fell away from her face. “If I start thinking about him, I start to panic,” she said. “I’m trying to distract myself. And now it’s not working anymore.”

  “Sorry.”

  Judy hung up the phone and strode to the circle. “I think Lucia’s in a good mood,” she said, “at least, a—”

  The world twitched, and we were elsewhere. Even at this hour—it was probably after nine in the evening—the node was busy. Men and women crossed between doorways, talking rapidly or carrying bundles of notebooks or strangely-shaped parcels wrapped in brown paper. A few people were pushing carts that seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds.

  “—better one,” Judy finished. “We’re to wait here for a guide.”

  We took a few steps to one side—I didn’t know if people could teleport in while the spot was still occupied, and I didn’t want to find out—and waited. Viv stared at everything in wonder. “You think of magic as being, sort of, allakazam!” She waved her fingers in what was meant to be a mysterious way. “But this is all like some kind of manufacturing business. A drab one. Couldn’t they paint murals on the walls or something?”

  “It is a manufacturing business, in a way,” Judy said. “They collect the sanguinis sapiens from the node and process it for use in semi-magical technology, or for healing, or…there’s lots of uses.”

  “It just seems so far removed from what Jeremiah does.” Viv walked over to a stack of plastic crates and peeked inside the top one.

  “Viv!”

  “I’m not touching. And it’s nothing interesting. Just a bunch of empty glass vials.”

  “For use in collecting sanguinis sapiens,” a new voice said.

  Viv jumped and took a few hasty steps away, putting her hands behind her back. Dave Henry smiled at her. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” he said. “Not for that, anyway.”

  “Dave…” I couldn’t think how to end that sentence. The smile fell away from Dave’s face.

  “Come with me,” he said, and we followed him in silence.

  Now that we were here, I was having trouble remembering all the reasons for coming that had made so much sense an hour ago. I had no idea what Judy had told whoever she’d spoken to, whether it had even been Lucia—probably not—but Lucia had to know, now, that we’d found Jeremiah, and that he wasn’t with us and hadn’t killed us. What she might make of that, I didn’t know, but it made me nervous, going in to see Lucia without all the facts at my disposal.

  The hallway to Lucia’s office—the usual one, not the insanely long one that was the test for the neurological marker—snaked a little and had no doors or windows. That last made sense, because I was pretty sure the Gunther Node was deep underground. Where else could something this size be without drawing all sorts of attention? I walked beside Judy and behind Viv, who was still looking about her with curiosity, as if this weren’t a boring, cold passageway that smelled faintly of gardenias. Except for the gardenias, it could have been some Cold War bunker, designed to withstand a nuclear blast.

  Eventually, we came to the short hallway lined with metal doors I was becoming familiar with, and Dave opened the third door on the right. “Inside,” Lucia said, and we all dutifully filed in.

  To my surprise, Lucia’s office was tidy for once, with the stacks of paper on the metal bookshelf replaced with two-inch-thick binders and the plastic milk crates filled with hanging file folders. Lucia sat behind her desk, her fingers steepled in front of her. “Well, if it isn’t Nancy, Bess, and George,” she said with a wry smirk.

  “Who?” I asked.

  Lucia rolled her eyes. “Nobody reads the classics anymore,” she said. “Tell me why I shouldn’t tear each of you a new one for going after a dangerous criminal on your own.”

  “He’s not a criminal!” Viv exclaimed. “He’s not a traitor, either.”

  “He fled apprehension. That doesn’t make him innocent.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I said. We’d agreed on the way over that I would do the talking, but now I wasn’t sure Viv could keep quiet. I glared at her, and she glared back at me.

  “Is it,” Lucia said. “I’m listening. I might not be listening for long, so make it quick.”

  I nodded, and skipped over the part where we figured out how to track Jeremiah and started in where he’d surprised us in his apartment. Lucia’s eyes narrowed as I revealed that Jeremiah was a traitor, narrowed further when I said he was a reformed one, and by the time I reached the end of the story, her lips were thin and pressed tightly together. “He’s playing you,” she said finally.

  “No!”

  I elbowed Viv in the side. “I don’t think so. He wanted to leave, go into hiding. He didn’t see any benefit to coming to you.”

  “Neither do I. You expect me to believe his story?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Lucia raised her eyebrows. “Just like that?”

  I braced myself against her desk. “Jeremiah had a lot of opportunities to hurt the Wardens. Instead, he steered the Nicolliens toward the solution to the failing bindings. You know the invaders were taking advantage of that catastrop
he. If he were still loyal to them, why would he have helped the Wardens instead?”

  “We have only his word for that,” Lucia said with a frown.

  “You can corroborate it,” Judy said. “Seth Richards spearheaded that research. He’d know if Jeremiah were involved, and how.”

  “True.” Lucia nodded at Dave, who left the room. “Do you have any idea how much damage Washburn could do if I took him at his word? He’s a self-admitted traitor and we have no way to prove he’s reformed. The Board would take me apart if I were to appear lax toward traitors.”

  “After…what happened the night of the purge,” I said, unwilling to say Martin’s name, “I doubt anyone will believe that of you.”

  Lucia stiffened and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “All the more reason for me to be strict in my enforcement of the new policy.”

  “Then meet with him. Make up your own mind. We told him we could set up a meeting in a neutral place, somewhere you both can feel safe. Please, Lucia. Think of how much he knows that might give us an edge.”

  Dave came back into the room. “Richards confirms that Washburn gave him the critical information he needed to solve the failing bindings.”

  “Well, that’s something.” She pulled out her phone. “What number?”

  Viv recited it for her. Lucia crooked her finger at me. “No more detective work, all right? You realize you risked the future of the oracle tonight. You and Rasmussen both going off to potential death…did you have a third candidate for custodian waiting around somewhere?”

  I gulped. “Um…”

  “That’s what I thought. Nevertheless…good work. Now, get out.”

  Dave shepherded us into the hallway and pointed at the door. “She’s pleased,” he said. “She wants to believe Washburn is on our side. It would make for a huge morale boost, after…Martin.”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” I said.

  “It was a huge blow. She won’t even talk about it with me. Maybe someday…” He shook his head and went back into Lucia’s office.

  “So, does that mean we won?” Viv asked.