Sam
Three days after Hanover goes missing while on an errand to Koreatown, his body is returned to the front gates of the Red City.
The skin of the man’s hands and arms has been peeled back all the way up to his elbows. There are other injuries all over his body, too gruesome for Sam to name.
She cannot untangle Hanover’s capture from her meeting with Ari. Had Sam not been at the beach that night, she would have accompanied Hanover on his errand, would have ensured all went well. Instead, he’d gone without her.
Ari couldn’t have set this up. Could he? He declared to her that he wouldn’t report their meeting back to Lumines—but she knows better than to trust him. What if he had indeed told them everything? What if he knew that she was supposed to accompany Hanover that night? What if he had concocted the plan?
“He wasn’t a polemist,” Will says now as they gather with Diamond at the estate. “He doesn’t work directly on deals. He was outside the scope of typical retaliation. Hewas,however, a part of our inner circle, a loyal crewman for decades.”
“So they wanted to say that it was personal this time,” Sam replies.
“Indeed,” Will agrees.
Sam feels a black anger rise in her chest. Hanover, who was the first kind face she saw at the estate, who delivers her payments and notices her moods and sees her when she wants to be seen. They attacked him as mercilessly as they attacked Will.
“What do we do, then?” Sam asks.
“An eye for an eye,” Diamond says quietly.
They both look at her.
“And what might be considered an equivalent?” Will says.
“Well,” Diamond says coolly, “what are the eyes of Lumines?”
They all know the answer to this—a syndicate’s philosophers. But Sam blanches. Philosophers are not to be harmed. What Diamond is suggesting goes against this unspoken rule.
“The other syndicates are going to disapprove,” Will says.
“They’ll come around.”
Sam shivers at Diamond’s words. They’ll see it as a reasonable retaliation for targeting Diamond’s most trusted manservant. They’ll say it’s a one-time deal.
“Lumines has a philosopher attending the Oxford conference this year,” Diamond continues. “Dominique St. Clair. Cleopatra.”
“At the conference?” Will lifts an eyebrow at his mother. “It will be trouble, getting out before the news spreads like wildfire.”
“Then we’d better make sure we act quietly.” Diamond looks at Sam this time, and with a wave of dread, Sam realizes that she’s being tapped to attend. To commit the assassination alone.
Will looks skeptical. “She’s too new,” he says.
“And yet she’s done quite well, hasn’t she?” Diamond replies. “No one will notice her or what she’s doing. You’ll both be gone before anyone realizes what’s happened.”
“This isn’t a routine job we’re talking about. This is an execution of a philosopher. Every syndicate will be talking about this.”
“Then I suppose we’ll be putting her to the test.”
Sam stays where she is, silent and rigid, listening to them speak around her.
At last, Diamond looks at her. “Can you do it?” she asks.
Can you do it?She’d done it to Maclan, had handed Zhukov over to Diamond. She can do it, but the thought makes her tremble all over. Worse, she’ll be on her own. There is no mention of Sebastian joining them.
But Sam looks into Diamond’s eyes and sees a vein of her own mother there, questioning her worth. Her heart surges, aching to please, and she gives the only answer she can.
“Yes, ma’am,” she says.
