Cool Hand (9 page)

“No.” Pia leaned over the seat and reached out a hand to Yelena, speaking in the formal Athanate style. “My sister, wait just one hour. The hunger is deep upon you and Olivia’s first should be gentle. With my kin, Gary and Leon, you can drink your fill.”

I started to speak, but she anticipated my argument and turned to me.

“When I became a Mentor, it was a decision for my kin as well as me. They expect to be called on for this, and they would be offended if they weren’t. Also, they’re trained.”

Trained. She meant that if Yelena got a little out of hand the twins wouldn’t start thrashing and panicking, which would only make things worse. Trained also meant being able to read her signals and calm her down. And with two of them, they had a slim chance that they might be able to. On top of that, Yelena would need to take only half from each, making it easier for them to recover.

If it went the other way, if Yelena indulged herself with the attractive twins, mixed sex and Blood, how angry would Nick be? Damn, but running an Athanate House was hard enough without additional complications like these.

I’d seen Bian recover from Blood arousal. Diana had been there and warned me that many Athanate would not be able to control themselves. Yelena could. She shuddered and turned her head away, as if Olivia’s face had become painfully bright to her eyes.

Then she came off the seat and knelt in the central space, surrounded by all the shopping bags. She took Pia’s outstretched hand and pressed her lips to it.

“Thank you, sister.”

She returned and sat back. I expected Olivia to move away, but she didn’t. She threaded Yelena’s arm around her and snuggled her head against her. “Rain check, I guess,” she said brightly.

For all her bravado, her heart rate hadn’t returned to normal. I couldn’t decide whether it was brave or foolish.

Yelena liked it. “I will look forward to it, and I will not be rough, sister,” she said. She kissed the redhead’s hair gently and then tilted her head back and closed her eyes. It looked as if she was concentrating on her breathing.

Everyone was doing things for the House. Putting themselves in danger. Welcoming Yelena.

And everyone was relying on me, on my judgment, even though I was constantly getting everything wrong.

What if I was wrong about Yelena?

What damage might she do to my House?

How long could I go on making mistakes before I made one we couldn’t come back from?

Speaking of mistakes, I had a date to be dressed down by Naryn, one that I couldn’t delay any longer.

“How deep is the shit I’m in?” I tried to make a joke of it with Bian in the car.

“This isn’t funny.” She shook her head. “You’re not getting it. Put yourself in his shoes. He’s been given the Denver mantle. That means he’s responsible for what happens in Denver, but not in the human meaning of the word. In Athanate terms, Panethus can demand he receive the punishment due anyone in his mantle. You go rogue, and Panethus can have him executed.”

I knew the way the Athanate law went; I was responsible in exactly the same way for members of my House. I just hadn’t thought about it from Naryn’s point of view.

“He knows you’ve been given a difficult task and your House needs a leader,” she went on. “He also knows you’ve achieved a lot under difficult circumstances for Altau.”

“But…” I prompted her.

“But he can’t accept the risk of him and Skylur getting the blame for what you might do because of a crusis event we can’t predict. Or because your wolf tips your Athanate over the edge. Or you simply do something wrong because you don’t understand all the Athanate laws yet.”

Yeah, what would I do in his shoes? I was silent as I let that sink in.

“I argued him back on the mania, based on Keith being an ex. I’ve pointed out you’re a liaison with the wolves and a pack member, so this isn’t just Athanate business and he doesn’t want to upset Larimer if he can help it.”

I cleared my throat. “Is that going to be enough?”

“With you taking a Carpathian spy into your House?” She sighed. “I don’t know. It may depend on what Skylur thinks of it.
If
he’s had time to respond to Naryn’s messages.”

Okay, Naryn had a tough job to do. I got that.

But was the way he behaved toward me solely because of that? I wasn’t so sure.

This was going to be a helluva meeting.

We drove the rest of the way without talking.

Only a couple of weeks ago, in the aftermath of the Assembly, the grounds of Haven had been a tent city. The need to absorb new Houses into Panethus in the shortest possible time had overridden the security issues. Every security team from every House had visited. Every inch of the property had been used.

Today it was silent and empty, still covered in snow from the freak storm we’d had.

We walked in through the main doors, and the place felt as empty inside as out.

“What’s happened to the Bow Creek children?” I asked.

Bian grimaced. “About to be sent to Ireland. We negotiated a deal with House Glandore. They’re…” she searched for a phrase, “specialists in dealing with trauma.”

“Wasn’t there anyone closer?” Some of the children didn’t even speak English.

“We have Houses in North America that deal with this sort of thing, but everyone is on maximum alert against an attack by Basilikos.”

“And here?” I gestured around. “By now, Basilikos knows where this place is.”

Bian snorted. “Think of it as the Empty Fort Strategy, from Wang Jingzé’s Thirty-Six Stratagems. Basilikos knows we know they know. They see a valuable location left obviously undefended. Therefore, it must be a trap.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Except when it goes wrong. Don’t we still have the Lyssae for protection?”

In the depths of Haven there was a room with living statues, the Lyssae. When they weren’t being statues they were defenders of House Altau, and I’d guess each of them was worth as many as thirty Athanate. I’d met them and I wouldn’t want to go up against them, not with all of Ops 4-10 at my back.

“Only Skylur or Diana would be able to control them,” Bian said with a scowl.

So that would be a ‘no’. I hoped the empty fort bluff worked. Losing Haven would be a huge blow for Altau.

The house wasn’t as empty as it seemed. The children were in the main library, being looked after by Elizabetta’s team, and Bian let me go in and see them.

It was a mistake; there wasn’t anything I could do. Most of them were heavily sedated, asleep or staring blankly into space. It was eerily quiet.

There was food. Some of them had been awake enough to eat. No hamburgers or spicy tacos: rice, grains, bread and water. There were some plain fruits and nuts, which was good.

Gerardo and the girl who’d been hiding in the tool cabinets with him were awake.

They looked listlessly at us, but Gerardo’s face changed when he realized who we were. He fought the drugs in his system to speak. “Devils,” he whispered. “Devil women.”

They were both wearing rough robes, which was all that had been found at Bow Creek. A supply of clothing was on its way, but I wondered if Elizabetta was going to be able to persuade them to get dressed. Would they even know how to tie shoelaces?

And worse, Gerardo and his friend didn’t seem to have any idea of modesty or proper clothing. Their robes were hanging half open. Maybe they were dazed by the drugs, but I got the impression they just didn’t care.

“Nos reuniremos de nuevo. I hope we will meet again,” I said gently. “Nosotros puede habla. And we can talk.”

“I will kill you,” he slurred. “You steal my chance to be Matlal. I will kill you.”

If he’d been able to, I thought he would have spat at me.

Bian pulled at me, her face utterly blank.

I bit my lip and turned away.

Was Matlal the worst of the Basilikos? Or were there other children like this, all over the world in Basilikos domains?

We got into the elevator.

“How long?” she said. She didn’t press a floor button; she entered a code on the pad. Her fingers stabbed at the numbers, missing them. She had to do it twice.

I waited.

“How long,” she said again, “after he was kidnapped, did it take him to stop crying for his parents? To realize that they weren’t coming? To become that?”

I had no answer.

I’d seen glimpses of the Bian beneath the faces she projected to the world, but today was the first I’d seen of a pain like this.

She was still facing the elevator panel, her face hidden from me.

“Naryn’s going to test you, Amber,” she said. “He’s going to need to know how things are going with the pack. About Larry and Yelena. About Keith and your kin. About obeying orders. He’s going to pressure you and see how well you handle the stress. He’ll give you orders you won’t want to follow. How you handle all that is his overriding concern at the moment. If you don’t pass, then he’ll order me to put you in one of our security cells.” She paused and half-turned her head to me. “I can’t go against him in that situation.”

I didn’t feel there was anything I could say to that, so we went the rest of the way down in silence.

When the doors opened, it was to a dimly-lit cavern.

It was the first time I’d seen the Altau command center.

It looked like an abandoned TV news studio. There were the rows of tables with computer screens. Headsets, keyboards and mice lay on the tables. Rolling chairs were neatly docked against them. All the workstations were empty.

At the far end was a raised circular dais holding a huge desk shaped like a C. Naryn sat there in the middle of it, backlit by a curved wall of monitors. His head was bowed and he was listening to something on a headset. His eyes flicked dispassionately to us for a moment before he returned to concentrating on whatever he was listening to.

He was a short man, with black hair, olive skin and intense eyes. Even sitting, he managed to convey the impression of balance and power. He was dressed in tan chinos and a rumpled, pale blue shirt. A plate of drying sandwiches and a tall coffee mug sat forgotten on the desk.

As we neared, he pulled his headset mike away from his mouth and covered it with his hand.

“The facial recognition system isn’t working again,” he said quietly, without raising his head.

“Probably the same reason as last time.” Bian woke up one of the closer workstations and her fingers danced over the keyboard and mouse. A vertical bank of screens behind Naryn began to display a changing selection of video feeds from airports and transportation hubs.

My mouth twisted. It looked like they were hacking all the security cameras in Colorado.

I pulled over a chair and sat at the command table.

Naryn spoke Athanate quietly for a minute more before finishing the conversation and slipping the headset off.

He rubbed his face. He looked like I felt.

With Bian distracted, I decided to get in first.

On Tuesday, despite Haven being practically unmanned, not to mention completely snowbound, Naryn had come in to Denver to help against Noble and Colonel Petersen’s troops. He was too late to join in the battle on Coykuti Mountain, but given the freak snowstorm, I was amazed he’d been able to get in at all. Also, once he grasped the situation, he hadn’t wasted any time in arguments; he’d just concentrated on where he could make the most difference. A very different side of him from the angry Diakon of our previous meeting, who wanted nothing more than to lock me up.

“Thank you for your help with Emily and her family,” I said. “It was a huge relief, being able to focus just on the problems with Larimer’s pack.”

“Working as a team can do that,” he said.

I had enough of a feel for the way he came at things to realize the quiet start didn’t bode well for the rest of this conversation. The longer he spoke gently, the rougher it was going to get.

“What I did,” he said, “I would do for any member of Altau.”

And
that
was a neat reminder of what Bian had said: I might be House Farrell, but I was still part of Altau, and as Diakon, he represented House Altau in Skylur’s absence.

“That’s how Athanate Houses work. The least of us can call on our resources, and expect support to the utmost of the House’s abilities.” He leaned back and motioned me to pull up a chair before concluding. “The justifications and accounting come afterward.”

Ouch.

I sat opposite him. Bian continued her work on the computer systems. A second bank of monitors started displaying freeze-frame pictures of faces from the security cameras. The faces were progressively overlaid with patterns of neon-green triangles. At the end, they looked as if they’d been reconstructed from green wire.

“I understand there’s been no challenge for the leadership of the pack,” Naryn said. “How have you left the situation with Larimer?”

“We are, temporarily, a sub-pack.”

“Who’s we?”

“Alex and me. An unchanged Were called Olivia Todd. Maybe Nick Gray, the bounty hunter. Maybe Ursula Tennyson.”

“That’s Ursula Tennyson as in his lieutenant? And what about the person who I understand is Olivia’s lover, Richard Olsen? He’s a lieutenant as well, isn’t he? As Alex was. Why not make a clean sweep of all Larimer’s lieutenants, and try for Silas Falkner as well?”

I swallowed my anger. He was just trying to provoke me. Trying to see how much I was in control of myself.

“Because that’s not what I’m trying to do, and this is not part of any plan,” I said. “We don’t want to challenge Felix or take over the pack. Felix is the right person to lead it. We just want to be an affiliate pack in the same territory. And my entire House qualifies as my pack. From my perspective I don’t see a difference between House and pack.”

His eyes didn’t move to look at Bian, but I could almost see the way he was thinking. Naryn had been the Altau Diakon before Bian. Then he’d been in charge of Altau’s clandestine spread of sub-Houses across the whole United States. One of the reasons he was back as Diakon in Denver was that Skylur felt I’d damaged Bian’s integrity as Diakon; I’d made her too sympathetic to me. Naryn was making absolutely sure not to fall into that trap.

Bian had argued that my links to the pack were one reason for not locking me up.

If Naryn thought leaving me free was undermining the pack’s stable structure, that argument failed. The thought of being locked up again spiked my adrenaline. I tried to take deeper breaths without being obvious about it.

Naryn noticed the change in my heart rate. He already thought I was a hair’s breadth from rogue, and this wasn’t helping.

Calm.

I forced my pulse back down again. Was it enough to convince him I could keep control?

His eyebrow arched, but all he said was, “How permanent is this arrangement with the pack?”

I wondered what he wanted to hear. That the situation was stable, and Pack Deauville would be staying in Denver? Or that we’d have to leave the area to remain a pack? I had a feeling Naryn wouldn’t let me loose in the world without supervision.

“I don’t know. When we met, the pack was in shock from the news about Noble. We made a case that we belonged in Denver just as much as they did. We refused to challenge and we submitted to Felix in front of them all. It worked, but what they’re thinking now after they’ve had a chance to sleep on it, I’m not sure.”

“Obviously, from today’s incident, not everyone’s happy. Can Larimer manage them? Is he secure?”