The Far Shores (The Central Series) (35 page)

Lóa Thule smiled, but
she didn’t appear to Renton to be at all amused. Her mildly flirtatious act was
rapidly disintegrating in the face of what looked very much like impatience.

“We have Anastasia
Martynova.” Her voice was harsh, her words hurried. “Is that specific enough
for you, Mr. Hall?”

“Quite,” he answered,
his tone measured and chilly. He leaned back in his chair, toyed with the gilded
Meisterstuck Signature fountain pen that Anastasia had given him as a Christmas
present three years earlier. “You will have to provide some sort of proof
before I can consider your claim, however.”

It was a careful gambit.
There was no point in pretending that all was well – the destruction of
Anastasia’s convoy had been relayed to him only moments after it had happened,
though not soon enough for a successful recovery – but it was important to
emphasize that he doubted
her.

“Of course. I
anticipated your desire.” Lóa Thule responded with rapid-fire diction,
releasing the clasp on her metallic purse, then offering him a folded square of
expensive paper. “And I believe I fulfilled it, as well.”

She followed that remark
with a nasty smile that Renton didn’t understand until he looked at the photo.
Then it required a supreme effort to prevent his simmering anger from boiling
over on the spot, to keep his fury from showing in his expression. Renton was
so genuinely incensed that he couldn’t be sure he succeeded.

The paper had two color
photographs printed on it. Both were of Anastasia laid out in some sort of
metal table. The focus was deliberately narrow, without a background or
surrounding details that might provide a hint as to her location. She appeared
to be unharmed and unconscious.

She was most definitely
naked.

Renton took a deep
breath, and let a little of his anger seep into his demeanor. This was the
trickiest part of the gambit he had prepared – he needed to appear scandalized,
both at the indignity offered to his mistress and the personal slight aimed at
him, without showing the depth of his outrage.

“You dare?” His lip
quivered as he hesitated, watching the smile spread across Lóa Thule’s
increasingly despicable face. “It is as I had heard. The Thule Cartel is not
made up of people, but animals, degenerates. Your behavior sickens me.”

Lóa Thule tried to laugh
it off, but he could tell that she was thrown by his reaction. He was meant to
be worried for Anastasia’s life, not her dignity.

“And here I thought you
would appreciate that,” she simpered, studying him minutely. “It was done
entirely for your benefit, I assure you.”

“I doubt that very much,”
Renton said, setting the paper casually aside, as if it held no particular
meaning. “Let’s make this brief, as I find your presence offensive. What,
besides confirming the rumors of your cartel’s perversity, have you come to
share with me?”

Lóa Thule hesitated for
a moment, relying on a cigarette to buy her time while she tried to gauge the
situation. Her falter was brief, but the extensive training in social niceties
and diplomatic ugliness that Anastasia had forced on him made her uncertainty
obvious.

“Surely, you wish to
negotiate the release of your mistress? I have come to state terms. My
understanding was that Miss Martynova’s authority was vested in you in her
absence...”

“Then allow me to
disabuse you of your mistaken notions,” Renton snapped, slamming his hand down
on the desk and rising partway from his chair. “No one – and I do mean
no
one
– in the Black Sun Cartel would debase themselves by dealing with you
wretches. You are correct, inasmuch as I act as Anastasia Martynova’s
surrogate. Allow me the satisfaction of informing you that there will be no
deal. Your terms are meaningless. If you do indeed hold Miss Martynova captive,”
he snarled, picking up the paper and waving it at the Thule woman, “which, I
might add, this
filth
does nothing to persuade me of – then you, and
your cartel, are doomed. The Black Sun will come for you, and we will be
merciless in our pursuit. We will not negotiate, offer quarter, or succumb to
blackmail. I would suggest that you rectify this situation immediately, and
then wholeheartedly apologize to Miss Martynova for this outrage. She may be so
kind as to grant you a painless death. If I must act in her stead, then I
assure you I will offer you no such mercy.”

When she ground out her
cigarette on the wood of his desk, marring the gleaming finish of the polished
oak, Lóa Thule’s hand shook – whether from shock or anger, Renton couldn’t say.
He simply took what little satisfaction was left to take from it.

“If that is your
position, then I have clearly wasted my time here,” Lóa Thule responded,
speaking so rapidly that she was difficult to understand. She stood and took
her coat from the tree. “I cannot help but suspect that your feelings on the
matter might not be as universal as you claim. Perhaps a direct approach to
Josef Martynova would prove to be more fruitful and less tiresome...”

“Contact whomever you
like,” Renton said curtly, sinking back into his chair. “You will receive the
same answer – or perhaps an even less charitable response.”

“Your reaction puzzles
me,” Lóa Thule admitted, pulling her coat over thin shoulders. “You know that
your mistress is at our mercy, and yet you show so little regard for her
well-being. Rumors of your affection for her are widespread – but so are the
rumors of her distaste for you. Perhaps the latter are true? Perhaps you would
see the Martynova daughter eliminated to clear the way for your own ambition,
or in revenge for her public spurning and rebuke?”

Renton was familiar with
the rumors. He and Ana had spent months manufacturing them, after all. But the
implication stung nonetheless.

“You embarrass yourself
further, spouting such nonsense,” Renton said, shaking his head as if he pitied
her. “Understand this, if you are capable of understanding – I act in Anastasia
Martynova’s stead. I am nothing more than an instrument of her will, in this as
in all things. And she is, before anything, the Mistress of the Black Sun. She
would never allow you leverage to harm the interests of her cartel, whether by
threat to her person or otherwise. Whatever advantage you feel you have gained
is a product of your own delusions of grandeur, of the madness that afflicts your
poor excuse for a cartel.”

“Enough. I will take my
leave. I promise you this, Renton Hall – you will live to regret each of these
words – you and your mistress both.” Lóa Thule smiled, and for a moment, he
could clearly see the derangement that was rumored to afflict every member of
the Thule Cartel. “You will wish that you had taken the chance to bargain when
it was offered. I will see to that personally.”

Renton laughed, the most
fraudulent in a lifetime of false laughter.

“Thank you for the
warning. Allow me to give you one of my own, as a parting gift. Any indignity
you visit upon my mistress, any harm that should befall her by your hands, or
by the hands of your cartel, will be revisited on your person, a hundred times
over.” He paused and looked her straight in her eyes, frightfully unhinged
though they were. “I will see to that personally.”

Lóa Thule slammed the
door behind her, leaving him alone with his anxieties. Renton crumpled the
piece of paper and shoved it in his pocket, unwilling to look at it or part
with it.

He had already assembled
everything he would need in a small bag that rested beneath his desk. His hand
moved to the butt of his gun by reflex.

Renton made himself
count to thirty before he slipped out of his office and into the hall, hurrying
after Lóa Thule.

“Stop pacing.”

“I’m not. Okay – maybe I
am. But I’m nervous.”

“What do you have to be
nervous about? You see her all the time. You just saw her like three days ago.”

“I know. But this is the
first time I’ve seen her
here
.”

“So what? We’ve only
been here for a few weeks. It’s not like you’ve done anything special or bad
that you need to be worried about. Shit, you hardly do anything at all. I don’t
see what the big deal is.”

He started pacing again.

“I don’t know. It’s just…I
guess maybe I want to, like, impress her? Or something? It’s weird. The Program
has always been totally separate from the rest of my life. It’s not like what
we do is a secret or anything…”

“It is, actually. It’s
literally a state secret. Pretty much everything to do with Audits is
classified. You signed a confidentiality agreement and everything.”

“I did?”

“You are such an idiot.
Do you just sign things without reading them?”

“Sometimes?”

“Real smart. You do
realize that you not only agreed to keep Audits affairs secret on pain of
death, but you waived your right to a trial, assuming they were to charge you
with espionage, right?”

“Um…”

“I’m sure Miss Aoki
explained it to you,” Katya said, rolling her eyes while she toweled off her
arms and shoulders. “And stop pacing. If you’re going to do that stuff, get out
of the gym already. You do have your own room, you know.”

Alex sat down against
the wall.

“Sorry. I’m just
nervous.”

“You said that already.”
Katya sighed as she climbed off the stationary bike. She picked up her water
bottle from the mat beside her feet and regarded him critically while she
drank. “Alright. You obviously aren’t going anywhere. Spill it. What’s eating
you?”

Alex glanced over at
Katya, who wore an Academy gym shirt and track pants, same as him, along with a
headband to keep her hair out of her face, and tried to figure out what exactly
had kept him from sleeping well the night before – outside of the nightmares,
which had been getting progressively worse.

Actually, calling them
nightmares wasn’t truly accurate. It wasn’t as if he were being chased or
dreaming of his teeth falling out. The dreams were more like fragments of someone
else’s memory, accompanied by feelings of severe dislocation and anxiety. He
would dream of something as mundane as having dinner in a house he didn’t
recognize, or riding in the back seat of an unfamiliar car, always surrounded
by people who were maddeningly familiar, but that he could not place, and then
wake to a terrible headache and his heart pounding in his chest as if it sought
to break free of his rib cage. Last night he had dreamed of taking a walk around
the muddy banks of small lake, the ground littered with ragged white feathers
left behind by molting geese, holding his mother’s hand. When he looked at her,
however, he didn’t recognize the woman’s face.

This was all made even
more complicated by his inability to remember what his mother looked like when
he was awake. Just thinking about it made his head spin and his heart race.

“I’m not sure that Eerie
would like the person that I am, here,” Alex said, struggling to find
appropriate words. “I know she wouldn’t like what we do.”

“You mean killing
people. You’re still hung up on those guards in China, right?”

“Ah. Yeah. I suppose so.”

“You need to get over
that shit,” Katya said, sitting down beside him. “This isn’t an existence that
you can be halfhearted about. You can’t harbor reservations about doing
whatever you need to survive, or you won’t. Keep beating yourself up, and
you’ll be giving someone else the opportunity to do the same.”

“I hear you, but none of
that makes me feel better about it.”

“Look at it this way,”
Katya said, pausing to drink water. “What do you think Eerie would prefer – you
holding to some sort of arbitrary morality, or you coming back alive?”

Alex shook his head
while Katya wandered over to the weight bench.

“That’s pretty stark.”

“Quit moping and make
yourself useful,” she said, changing the weights on the bar. “Come and spot me.”

Alex changed the weights
on the bar, then stood at the head of the bench and helped Katya lift the bar
free. She gritted her teeth and banged out ten reps, then he helped her replace
the bar in the catch.

“The first time I killed
someone, I spent the next three days throwing up,” Katya admitted quietly,
staring up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes, as if she were reliving the
memory. “I saw his face every time I closed my eyes. I dreamed about it – not
every night, but often enough that I didn’t get enough sleep for the next few
weeks. I had to do it, of course – they set you up with an easy target before
you are admitted to assassin’s training, to prove that you are capable of
killing. The actual hit was nothing challenging, and I had two instructors
shadowing me in case something did go wrong. The only hard part was the murder.”

She paused, lost in the
memory, and Alex wondered if he was supposed to say something.

“I hadn’t thought of the
sewing needles yet, so I ported a razor blade instead, which was silly – it
hardly matters if an object has a sharp edge when it’s lodged in the tissue of
the heart. It was pretty ugly, not quick at all, but I stayed until it was
over, to be sure. And I thought I was fine with it. It’s not like I’m religious
or anything, and I was raised in the Black Sun, so I always knew that violence
would be part of my life. Becoming an assassin was Anastasia’s idea, but I was
all for it. I wanted to be useful to her.” She smiled briefly, but the cause
was a mystery to Alex. “It wasn’t until the next day, right in the middle of breakfast,
that it hit me. What I had done. I’m not sure how to describe it. I felt…cold.
Sick. I barely made it to the bathroom.”

Katya motioned to him,
and he helped her do another set.

“I thought I would never
forget his face, but that wasn’t true. After a year or so, it became
indistinct. These days, I can’t remember it at all. I don’t even know the last
time I thought about it.” Alex felt a twinge of guilt at making Katya bring it
up. He remembered their conversation on the rooftop, outside of his dorm room
at the Academy, and wondered why he felt so comfortable leaning on this girl.
It didn’t make sense, that the person he put his trust in was not only a
trained killer, but a devoted servant of Central’s arch-schemer, Anastasia
Martynova. “Long way around, I suppose I’m trying to tell you that you’ll get
it over it. The guilt doesn’t last. Eventually, you’ll start to understand that
it’s really as simple as this – either they die, or you do. If some Anathema
killed you, you wouldn’t rest any easier knowing that they felt bad about it.
So stop pretending that you are extending the dead a courtesy by regretting
your actions. You aren’t doing them any favors. It’s narcissistic, and frankly,
not very attractive.”

Alex laughed despite
himself.

“Thanks. I think.”

“No problem.” Katya
winked at him from the weight bench. “Everybody likes confidence, Alex – Eerie
included. Act with conviction, or if you can’t, fake it. It’ll turn into the
real thing in time.”

“You know, sometimes you
sound like a wise older sister, or something…”

“You want me to kick
your ass?”

***

Gaul frowned at the roster, while
Alice doodled on her own copy.

“I’m not sure I
understand the choices that you have made.”

“Oh?” Alice looked up
from her squiggly lines and retraced circles to grin at him. “Then, by all
means, please do tell me how to do my job.”

“I am not
second-guessing your decisions. I am simply unclear on the rationale for some
of them.”

Alice chewed on the end
of her pen and waited.

“For example,” Gaul
continued on, pushing his glasses up with one finger, “given the limited number
of personnel that can be designated as active-duty Auditors, why would you want
a second apport technician?”

“It’s part of my overall
concept,” Alice explained, leaning her chair back so it balanced only on the
rear legs. “When Alistair ran the Auditors, we did everything in pairs, or as
an overall unit, right?”

“As has been the
standard practice.”

“Whatever. I want a bit
more flexibility,” Alice explained. “I want to be able to divide my people into
two squads for specialized situations. It will contribute to their shared
strengths. I can’t be the only apport technician – I’m good, but I can’t be two
places at once. So, I need Chike. Besides, he’s a fully qualified demo expert,
and a damn good marksman. He’s got stronger combat fundamentals than most of
the rest. It’ll work.”

“Leaving that aside for
the moment,” Gaul said stiffly, transferring his attention to another file that
was open on his crowded desktop, “would you explain why you want to make Haley
Weathers an Auditor-in-Training? When I transferred her to the Program, it was
with the intent of her serving in a supporting capacity.”

“Yeah, I figured. That
is the way it has traditionally been done. We’ll still have her work remotely, maybe
even with that dog trick the Far Shores came up with.” Alice’s grin widened a
notch. “But Haley’s Astral Protocol is damn useful, and she’s only getting
better at possession. She can hack it in the field, believe me.”

Gaul gave her
inquisitive look.

“She can possess targets
while projecting herself remotely now?”

“Yes. Seems like your
theory about associating with Alex Warner increasing the effectiveness of
protocols was on the money. Haley is way more impressive than she was a few
months ago.”

The Director made a
series of notations on the open folder, then shuffled his paperwork.

“Moving on, I was
surprised by your decision to cut Neal Blum from the Program. I understand that
his combat proficiencies are low, and his performance was uneven, but it seems
to me that the Audits department is critically short of telepaths.”

Alice nodded.

“It’s true. But Blum
wasn’t ever going to qualify for field operations, and he was too unreliable
for me to put any trust in his performance. I’m not losing a field team because
their telepath made a mistake. Haley can provide a telepathic link in the
field, and Mitsuru can download the protocol for that, too, if necessary. Anyway,
I’ve got a full-time solution in the works – you won’t like it much, though.”

Gaul’s gaze sharpened.

“Please elaborate, Chief
Auditor.”

“I want to rescind Karim
Sabir’s Order of Exile,” Alice said, folding her hands behind her head. “And I
want to admit him to Audits.”

Gaul’s pen stopped its
perpetual motion.

“You cannot be serious.”

“Bet I can.”

“Karim Sabir very nearly
provoked open warfare between the Hegemony and the Black Sun,” Gaul exclaimed
angrily. “He was personally responsible for six deaths.”

“Which speaks to his
talents, I think.”

“He destabilized Central
for profit!”

“Well, he was a contractor,”
Alice pointed out. “That was his job.”

“I will not allow it,”
Gaul said forcefully. “The man is a menace.”

“Which is exactly why I
need him. Anyone who chooses to spend their exile in Iraq, through two American
invasions and a low-grade civil war, has got to be hard as nails. It’s like you
said, Gaul – I need a telepath. He’s one of the few F-Class telepaths floating
around who isn’t already affiliated with a cartel.”

“Absolutely not,” Gaul
said, crossing his arms. “I will not allow it.”

“Oh, come off it,” Alice
scolded. “You rescinded the Thule Cartel’s Order of Exile, and they caused way
more chaos than Karim.”

“I can control the Thule
Cartel. And I do not need to justify my actions to you.”

“Hate to be a
contrarian, boss, but you do. Remember that general Audit of Central that I’m
conducting? You’re on the list.”

Gaul was momentarily
unnerved, though he masked it well enough that he was fairly certain Alice
Gallow didn’t notice.

“That is an entirely
different affair.”

“If you say so. Believe
me, there are going to be questions about the Thule Cartel headed your way,
like it or not.”

“Nonetheless. I
categorically refuse your request. Karim Sabir is unfit to return to Central,
much less for active duty as an Auditor.”

Gaul subjected Alice to
his fiercest glare, one that he generally reserved for Board meetings, and
Alistair, back when he had been the Chief Auditor. Alice just grinned back like
they were having a pleasant chat. Water off a duck’s back.

“I guess it’s a good
thing I don’t need your permission,” Alice said lightly, picking at the cloth
that covered her chair arm. “I’m not asking, Gaul. I’m doing you the courtesy
of informing you of my intentions.”