The Archon's Assassin (16 page)

She sat back in H.B.’s chair, sinking into its soft leather cushion.

Shader nodded, as if she’d said something else. Maybe he was acknowledging what she’d said about the pub’s age after a beer-induced time lag. He guided himself into the chair opposite, one equally as regal as hers, with twists of carved and blackened wood, clawed feet, and sumptuous upholstery befitting a king. He pulled out a pipe and popped the curved stem into his mouth.

Rhiannon suppressed a giggle as he fumbled around with a pouch and stuffed some tobacco into the bowl. He patted his pockets and looked to her for help. She sighed, then returned to the bar and came back with matches and a cigar. Shader raised his eyebrows as she bit the end off and spat it into the fire.

“What? You can smoke, but not me?”

“No,” Shader said with a wry shake of his head. “It’s just, I was wrong earlier. You have changed.”

“We all have.” She struck a match and touched it to the end of her cigar. That could have been taken as, “The war with Sahul changed everyone,” but it’s not what she meant. She meant herself and Shader, the horror that had brought them together in Oakendale, the manipulation that had split them apart.

She slid the box of matches across the table.

She meant what Gaston had done. Mom, Dad, Sammy, and the things they’d faced inside Sektis Gandaw’s mountain. She meant a whole lot more besides, but now wasn’t the time to tell him about the girl, and she doubted there would ever be a right time to tell him about the father.

Shader tamped down the tobacco with a metal tool, and lit it with a slow circular motion of the match while taking shallow, rhythmic puffs. Shaking the match out, he once more took up the tamper and compressed the tobacco back to the top of the bowl.

Rhiannon grinned around her cigar, blew a cloud of smoke in Shader’s direction.

“It’s a fine art.” Shader struck another match and ran it around the bowl again, this time taking deeper puffs. “I’m just getting the hang of it.”

“The Deacon Shader I knew wouldn’t be seen dead smoking, and especially not a pipe.” It made him a younger version of Aristodeus to her mind, and that took him down another notch in her estimation.

Shader sat back comfortably, a dirty cloud swirling about his face. “I’m working on smoke rings, but they’re beyond me at the moment.” He pulled his hat over his eyes and slouched down in the chair. The hair splayed over his shoulders was streaked with gray, his chin rough and unshaven. It looked like he’d lost some weight, as well. Too much, if you asked her.

Without warning, Shader dropped a hand to his knee and winced.

“What is it with the leg?”

“What is it with the accent, Rhiannon? You sound like a bloody Westie.”

“Naughty, naughty. What would that crotchety old priest say?”

Shader sniggered. “Pater Podex, you mean?”

Rhiannon spluttered, and they both bubbled over with laughter. Shader had to put his pipe down as he rocked and shook with mirth.

“Are you crying?” Rhiannon jabbed a finger at his streaming eyes. She tried to sound serious, but instead spluttered and guffawed.

Shader wiped his eyes. “It’s the bloody smoke!”

Rhiannon picked up her glass and saluted him with it. “Bottoms up!”

She downed it in one.

Shader lifted his own glass and then hesitated.

“Go on,” she urged him. “Keep up.”

He shrugged and knocked his beer back. “Another?” He was already half out of his seat.

A group of squaddies spilled into the bar. Sandau was with them.

“Nah,” Rhiannon said. “I’ve had enough. Let’s walk it off.” She swayed as she stood.

Shader’s hand lashed out and caught her by the elbow.

“Still got the reflexes, then,” she said. For a long moment, their eyes locked. She couldn’t decide what she saw in his, but it was no comfort, whatever it was. She looked away, right into Sandau’s jealous glare.

Normally, she’d have told him where to go, and he’d have played along with her, but with her arm linked in Shader’s, more for mutual stability than anything else, all she could think of was to flash him her winningest smile. She winced the second they were outside. There was only one way he could take that, and it would do nothing to challenge her reputation as the cockiest, most callous bitch in the Fencibles.

***

“So, this is what they’ve done to the Martello Line,” Shader said, as they took refuge from the wind in the doorway of one of the circular towers. Atop the roof, he’d seen two soldiers huddled against the weather beneath a white flag bearing the red Monas. Across from the soldiers, pointing out to sea, was an immense cannon that dwarfed anything he’d witnessed during his stint aboard the
Aura Placida
.

The tower was built from hewn granite, and perhaps forty feet in diameter and sixty high. They were all virtually identical. He’d visited two or three as a child, when his father had been responsible for the coastal watch from Holy Head to Anderida. Back then, they’d been empty shells, left over from the time of the Ancients. Theory was, they’d been built to withstand an invasion by sea that had never come.

Maybe they’d gotten the dates wrong, he mused as he looked out across the churning waters, not for the first time wondering if it was Gallia he could see or just a low bank of cloud in the distance. By all accounts, the invasion was coming, and this time, there was nowhere left to run. At least, nowhere on Earth. That was both the strength and weakness of what Ipsissimus Silvanus was now calling “this island fortress.” The Nousians might have to dig in and fight for their lives, but it was going to be one hell of an uphill struggle for Hagalle.

“Tower number seventy-three,” Rhiannon said. “There’s seventy-two, and seventy-one.” She pointed down the coast. “And that’s the command center.”

There were perhaps five to six-hundred yards between the towers leading to the Redoubt, a colossal red-brick fortress with a high parapet and thick black barrels poking through the embrasures.

“There’s a twenty-four-pounder on the terreplein.” She cocked her thumb up at the flat roof above them. “We got to fire them in training. A crossfire from the neighboring towers covers incoming ships from every angle.”

Shader looked out to sea and then along the line of towers. “Do they have the range?”

“About a mile or so.”

“Doesn’t leave much time if the Sahulians come
en masse
.”

Rhiannon pulled him out of the doorway. “Nothing can get past our sea defenses, and even if they did,”—she flexed her biceps, and they popped out, sharp and defined. She’d hardened up since last he saw her, that was for sure. And in more ways than one—“they’d have to deal with the Fencibles.”

She led him in the direction of the Redoubt, letting the sea air do its best to sober them.

“The Ipsissimus doesn’t share your confidence. He was planning to send proselytizers to Aethir just before Hagalle took the Great West. There was to be another exodus, if Hagalle won here.”

“Aethir? How?”

“Ancient-tech? Something of Gandaw’s, maybe.” Or perhaps the explanation was closer to home. Rhiannon must have been thinking the same thing, judging by the look she gave him. After all, how had they gotten back to Earth after preventing the Unweaving? And Shader had known for years about Aristodeus having friends high up in the Templum.

Rhiannon shivered. The rain had slowed to a spit, but her dress was once more drenched and clinging in a way that made Shader uncomfortable. This time, when he offered his coat, she accepted.

They continued to walk, but the further they went, the more Shader’s knee burned. He paused a moment to rub it, felt the swelling.

“So, what exactly did happen to your leg?” Rhiannon said.

Shader winced at the memory of the rack, the anticipation of Shin’s iron spike poised to do even more damage. Thank Nous for Ludo’s last minute intervention. “I refused to fight.”

“For Aeterna?”

Shader nodded. “They saw it as sinful disobedience. Silvanus is a different kind of Ipsissimus to Theodore. I suppose he needs to be. Ain puts the right man in position for the times.”

“Was it the Judiciary?” Rhiannon shuddered, though it could have been from the cold.

Shader pressed his fist to his mouth and thought for a moment. “I don’t think they were meant to damage me quite so badly, but when the Investigator found out, he saw no reason to stop.”

Rhiannon squeezed his arm and tried to look him in the eye, but he wouldn’t permit it. Couldn’t. He didn’t want her to see the anger blazing there. The anger and the despair.

“Don’t worry, he muttered into his chest. “Adeptus Ludo got me out.”

“But you
are
still a priest?” Rhiannon asked. “You serve a templum? I assumed you were stationed in Londinium. I meant to find you one day, but there were always…” She trailed off and dropped her gaze away to the side.

Shader gave her a few moments, expecting she was going to tell him something, but when she didn’t, he let out a low chuckle. There was no mirth in it. “I am something of an itinerant these days. I go where I am sent, and if I am sent nowhere, I go wherever I damn well please.”

“That a fact?” Rhiannon asked, an impish glint in her eye.

Her mood seemed decided by the toss of a coin. He’d been starting to think the wind and the walk had sobered her up, but in an instant, she was drunk again, and far less awkward than he as she opened the coat to him and shared her warmth.

“Come on,” she said, “let’s get a cab.”

As they waited, Shader let his thoughts drift away from her closeness, her heat, the scent of her hair. He grasped at something to say, but their conversation had led him down a well-trodden path, and the words bubbled up of their own accord.

“Aristodeus came to me in Londinium.”

Rhiannon stiffened.

“He still wants me back on Aethir. Insists there’s an even greater threat than Sektis Gandaw, and that he needs me.” He shook his head. “It’s like, all that schooling, all that training, and now he thinks he owns me.”

Rhiannon nodded like she knew—really knew—what he was talking about. But how could she? How could anyone? “What did you tell him?”

“Same thing I always tell him. Same thing I told the Judiciary.” His look in her eyes this time was unwavering. “I’ve changed, Rhiannon. And this time, there’s no going back.”

***

They didn’t speak much on the ride down the coast. Shader lost himself in the rhythmic clop of the horse’s hooves as the two-wheeler carriage took them past the looming walls of the Redoubt and trundled on toward the shanty town that was just close enough to Hallow for supplies to be delivered or recruits to reach the fortress for their training, but far enough to discourage refugees from making a nuisance of themselves.

Rhiannon leaned her head on his shoulder, and by the time they pulled up outside one iron-roofed shack among many, she was fast asleep. Shader woke her gently and paid the driver as she stretched and yawned then went ahead to open the door. Her family home in Oakendale had been modest enough, but compared to this hovel, it was a palace.

She stood aside and gestured for him to go in. Her smile was ear to ear, and the sparkle had returned to her eyes.

“After you,” she said. “There’s booze inside.”

***

“Obedience is the rock,” Shader slurred, spilling whiskey over his hand as he tried to put the glass on the table. “It doesn’t matter if Silvanus is a despotic…” He couldn’t think of the word. Couldn’t think of much at all, the amount he’d had to drink.

“Dickweed?” Rhiannon said.

“Not that,” Shader said. He still had enough wares about him to know that would be sinful.

“Dog-breath? Dung-face?” She tried to look serious, but her chin quivered with suppressed mirth.

Shader shook his head. He knew he was wasting his breath, but he needed to finish his train of thought, for his own sake, if not for her edification. “My allegiance is to the Ipsissimal office, not the man. And whatever you or I might think of him—”

Rhiannon went to pick up her glass, misjudged, and knocked it on the floor. “Did you see that? It didn’t break.”

Liquor pooled under the table like she’d had an accident. She took up the bottle and drained it, stopped with it still pressed to her lips, and looked coyly at Shader.

“Sorry, it’s all gone.” She upturned the bottle to demonstrate.

“Then it’s a good job,” Shader said, triumphantly plucking his hip flask from his boot, “I always carry an emergency supply.” He unscrewed the lid and took a swig before passing it to Rhiannon.

She leaned across the table, grinning inanely.

What was it Shader had been saying? Whatever they might think of the Ipsissimus… “Silvanus is the right man for the times. No one else is going to stop Hagalle.”

“You could have.”

She must have meant before the Battle of the Homestead, when he’d pressed a blade to the emperor’s throat. Maybe he should have. Maybe not. Without Hagalle’s help, the Templum forces and the hybrids wouldn’t have lasted two minutes against Gandaw’s hordes.

Rhiannon fixed her eyes on his. There was a moment’s silence, and then she said, “Go on, admit it. You were tempted, weren’t you?”

He chuckled. “Lots of things tempt me, but that doesn’t make it right to do them.”

“Oh?” She slid and banged her crate closer to his. “So, Pater Shader, no one can persuade you to pick up your sword again. Is that what you’re saying?” She brushed the back of his hand with her fingers.

“Nope.”

“Not the Ipsissimus?”

“Nope.”

“Not Aristodeus?”

Mention of the philosopher sent his thoughts reeling in another direction, but luckily he was so drunk, they broke and scattered before he could latch onto them.

“Nope.”

She tilted her head and faked a sweet smile. “Not even me?”

She pulled him into a fierce kiss. Shader resisted, but she slid onto his lap and pressed her mouth to his again. This time, he responded. Her lips parted, and she gave him her tongue. She ran her fingers through his stubble and sighed, nibbled at his lip. She lifted his hand to her breast, made him squeeze.